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Lunar Ice Could Support Future Moon Missions

The findings were published in Science Advances on July 31, 2026, as space agencies prepare for a new era of lunar exploration. NASA's Artemis program is aiming for crewed missions to the moon's south polar region in 2028, where permanently shadowed craters may contain valuable deposits of water ice.

For astronauts, that ice could serve several purposes. Once melted and purified, it could provide drinking water. Electricity could also separate it into oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for rocket fuel. A reliable local supply would reduce the amount of material that future missions need to transport from Earth.

"It's crucial to identify any materials on the moon that an astronaut can make use of while they're up there," said Nicholas Schmerr, an associate professor in UMD's Department of Geological, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences and a co-author of the study. "Since they will be limited by the few resources they brought from Earth, anything they find on the moon will help them basically live off the land, especially for longer-term missions or outposts."

Satellites Cannot See Deep Underground

Scientists still do not know exactly how much ice exists on the moon or where most of it is located. Orbiting satellites can examine the lunar surface, but their instruments mainly detect material in the uppermost layer of soil.

Some of the moon's water ice may be buried much farther below the surface. The new study suggests that seismic measurements could reveal deposits that orbital observations cannot reach.

Frozen and dry lunar soil respond differently when seismic waves move through them. Ice makes the surrounding material stiffer, allowing vibrations to travel two to three times faster than they do through dry soil.

Ice-rich areas can also reflect seismic energy instead of allowing it to continue through the ground. The effect is similar to sound bouncing off a wall and producing an echo. According to Schmerr, a seismometer placed in the right location on the moon could detect both of these changes.

"We can use seismic waves to not just see whether ice is present but also roughly how much of it there is," he explained.

Testing the Seismic Signature of Moon Ice

The research team examined the idea in three different ways.

Lead author Harrison Lisabeth (Ph.D. '16, geology), a rock physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UMD alum, worked with volcanic rock from Arizona. When crushed, the material closely resembles lunar dust. Lisabeth froze the rock and used X-rays to observe how ice formed inside the tiny spaces between individual grains.

Co-author Matthew Siegler of the University of Hawaii created detailed temperature models for the moon's south polar region. These maps helped identify craters that have remained cold enough to preserve ice for billions of years.

At UMD, Schmerr used computer simulations to model small moonquakes traveling through underground deposits of lunar ice. Across all three approaches, the presence of ice produced distinct and measurable changes in the seismic results.

Lunar Ice May Preserve Ancient Solar System History

Moon ice could be useful for astronauts, but it may also contain important evidence about the early solar system.

Deeply shadowed lunar craters can trap water and other volatile materials for extremely long periods. Because the surrounding rocks are about four billion years old, the ice preserved there may offer clues about how water moved through the young solar system.

"The moon witnessed some of the most critical parts of the early solar system, including how water was delivered," Schmerr said. "Studying the ice deposited there could reveal how water spread and ultimately how Earth's oceans formed."

Upcoming Missions Could Test the Method

The researchers may soon have an opportunity to compare their predictions with real measurements from the moon.

China's Chang'e-7 mission is expected to land near Shackleton Crater in late 2026. The mission will carry a seismometer, and several suspected ice deposits are located nearby.

NASA's Artemis astronauts could also deploy the Lunar Environmental Monitoring Station in 2028. Schmerr helped develop the instrument for seismic exploration.

"Our findings are laying the groundwork for an observation we'll get in the next couple of years," Schmerr said. "No one has physically measured the ice on the moon yet, but we now have a prediction for what to look out for. That's an important first step."

This research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences Division (Contract No. DEAC02-05CH11231), and the NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute CLEVER project (Grant No. GR00024738) and GEODES project (Grant No. 80NSSC19M0216). This article does not necessarily reflect the views of these organizations. %!s()

In America, bigger is almost always better. We have bigger dinner plates than do most of the rest of the world. We also have bigger refrigerators to hold all that food needed to fill those bigger plates. That necessitates a larger kitchen to house the big fridge, demanding a bigger house around that, and likely a comparatively large driveway leading to that big-ass house. That super-sizing could make any normal-sized car or truck parked on the property seem dinky by comparison. 

In such a case, the mega-big six-door, lifted, and wide-tired 2006 Ford F350 we looked at last Friday would be the perfect accompaniment to any such oversized McMansion. Unfortunately for its builder/seller, a $55,000 asking price proved too large for most of our tastes. That was obvious in the comments and the extremely overwhelming 90% 'No Dice' loss the fancy Ford suffered in the vote.

The Rotary Club

For the longest time, the Ford Motor Company maintained a relationship with Japan's Mazda Motors. Ford sold some massaged Mazdas as Mercury models, and shared its popular Explorer—albeit only in two-door form—with their Asian partners. At no time, however, did Ford ever sell any of Mazda's Wankel-engined products as its own. In fact, aside from NSU and a dalliance by Citroën that actually drove the company to bankruptcy, Mazda has pretty much gone it alone in cheerleading the rotary engine.

Perhaps the most famous and beloved model to carry the triangle piston torch is the RX-7, and today we're looking at a fairly unmolested 120,000-mile 1978 GS edition to see what all the fuss is about.

This Spark Yellow over beige vinyl RX-7 hails from the model's first year on the market. It entered the U.S. market replacing the Cosmo, becoming Mazda's sole rotary offering in North America over three ensuing models and its RX-8 replacement.

They don't build 'em like they used to

According to the seller, they have owned the car for 13 years, and it came with a fresh build of its 12A two-rotor motor at that time. That 1146cc Wankel put out a laudable 100 horsepower when new. Per the ad, this one has a Racing Beat header and exhaust, so perhaps it makes a couple more ponies.

Everything looks stock under the sloping hood, although a missing belt on what looks to be an air-injection pump does raise questions. Backing the engine up is a five-speed manual transmission driving the solid rear axle. Braking is by discs in the front and drums in the rear, masked by handsome factory four-spoke alloy wheels.

Those wheels look to be in great condition, as does the bodywork atop them. Age has taken its toll on the matte black paint on the windscreen pillars and license plate lamp housings, but aside from those minor issues, it's difficult to tell the car from new. Unfortunately, the ad doesn't say whether it drives as well as it looks.

Where there's wear, there's bound to be tear

One thing that can be gleaned from the pictures in the ad is that the car's interior has not staved off Father Time as well as the exterior has. 1970s plastics don't have the same mojo as modern ones do, a fact made obvious by the cracked dashboard, broken door lever surrounds, and split seam in the driver's seat. Additionally, there are faded window cranks, worn silver paint on the dash separator, and a tear in the passenger-side door cover.

Do any of those issues kill this Mazda's appeal? Probably not. Taken as a whole, though, the interior's flaws should offer some wiggle room in negotiating a deal on the car. Replacement parts for these cars are going to be next to impossible to obtain, after all, so its current condition is likely going to have to be lived with by its next owner.

One final note about the interior is the stereo, as it's in stereo, with a more modern unit having been placed in the dash under the factory-installed one. That's kind of weird. In the plus column, this is a GS model and so comes with a sunroof. That's a glass panel, which the seller claims is a fairly rare inclusion.

A humdinger of a deal?

Aside from the stereo and the exhaust, this SA RX-7 appears to be completely stock and in very decent condition. It also carries a clean title and will come with some original literature and a few maintenance receipts. That's everything you might expect from a well-cared-for car.

To take possession of this RX-7, there is the small matter of the $11,799 the seller is asking for it. That, they warn, is the only deal they are willing to entertain, as trades are off the table. Additionally, they only want to deal with serious inquiries, so low-ballers and shenanigan-eers need not apply.

What do you think about this tidy if flawed RX-7 when its $11,799 asking price is taken into account? Does that seem fair for the car as it's presented in its ad? Or do the interior foibles demand a lower asking price?

You decide!

Chicago, Illinois, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.

Help me out with Nice Price or No Dice. Hit me up at [email protected] and send a fixed-price tip. Remember to include your commenter handle. %!s()

Spooky star

Tabby's star's light curve shows a string of irregular, asymmetric dimming events. Some reduce its brightness by more than 20%. The depths and durations of these dimmings also vary wildly from one dip to the next. The star also fades slowly over years, more than any of the hundreds of comparable stars studied. It quickly became one of the most studied mysteries in modern astronomy. There was speculation about alien megastructures before more grounded explanations took hold.

Follow-up observations in infrared and optical wavelengths, as well as from ground-based telescopes, have ruled out several possibilities. These include a dusty disk, a colliding asteroid belt and a single catastrophic impact. What has emerged instead suggests clouds of dust passing in front of the star. This dust likely comes from shattered comets, ring systems or other orbiting debris. Exactly what is producing these dips has remained unclear. Whether a hidden companion object is responsible is still an open question.

Now, this new study, led by Cristina Madurga-Favieres of the University of Warwick, revisits Tabby's star using fresh data. It uses NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to test these long-standing theories.

A clear signal

In TESS observations, the team found a symmetric, round-shaped dip in the star's light, lasting about 21 hours and dimming its brightness by just over 1%. This kind of dip, called a transit, is created when an object orbiting the star blocks some of its starlight as it passes in front.

The transit occurred on Sept. 3, 2019, and was not previously reported. This signal looked much cleaner than the other irregular dips seen in this star's light. Combining years of TESS data with new radial velocity measurements, the team estimated that the object that produced this transit orbits the star roughly every three to four years, though its exact period remains uncertain. Its mass is likely somewhere between 5 and 14 Jupiter masses, and its radius is around 1.7 times Jupiter's radius. This mass and size range place it right on the boundary between a giant planet and a brown dwarf.

"This work presents a symmetric round-shaped transit found in the TESS data of KIC 8462852, suggesting the existence of a companion, either a giant planet or a brown dwarf, around the star," the team writes in the paper.

The researchers tested several alternative explanations, including a background eclipsing binary star, a stray dust cloud or a cluster of exocomets. None fit the data as well as a single, solid companion.

Who is the culprit?

The team says future monitoring around the predicted time windows identified in this study should be able to pin down the exact orbital period and confirm whether the companion is truly there.

"JWST and HST observations could be used to observe and study the primordial atmosphere of the companion and, along with the discovery of the next transit, they would help to disclose more information about this system," the team concludes.

If confirmed, this would be the first companion ever directly detected transiting Tabby's star, and it could finally explain the star's decade-long mystery. While its presence produces a repeating transit pattern in the star's light, its gravity may be responsible for flinging comets and debris into orbits around the star that produce the irregular dimming that first caught astronomers' attention.

"The strongest theory is that a group of exocomets or planetesimal fragments are responsible for the irregular and apparently non-periodic dips in the Kepler light curve of Tabby's star," the team explains. "The presence of a companion would explain why these bodies are driven to the vicinities of the star, breaking up, as it would orbitally perturb them."

Written for you by our author Shreejaya Karantha, edited by Gaby Clark, and fact-checked and reviewed by Robert Egan—this article is the result of careful human work. We rely on readers like you to keep independent science journalism alive. If this reporting matters to you, please consider a donation (especially monthly). You'll get an ad-free account as a thank-you.

Publication details

Cristina Madurga-Favieres et al, Evidence for a giant companion orbiting Tabby's star, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2026). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stag1273

Who's behind this story?

Shreejaya Karantha

Shreejaya Karantha is a science writer and astronomy communicator based in India, with a focus on astrophysics and the early universe. Full profile →

Gaby Clark

MA in English, copy editor since 2021 with experience in higher education and health content. Dedicated to trustworthy science news. Full profile →

Robert Egan

Bachelor's in mathematical biology, Master's in creative writing. Well-traveled with unique perspectives on science and language. Full profile →

© 2026 Science X Network

Citation: A 21-hour dip could help explain Tabby's star's decade-long dimming mystery (2026, August 3) retrieved 3 August 2026 from https://phys.org/news/2026-07-hour-dip-tabby-star-decade.html

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Owlcat Alexander Mishulin was asked about the idea of taking on BG4 in an interview with IGN, seemingly one of a couple around the studio's 10th birthday. "First of all, I would like to thank all the players, all your audience that consider us to be able to do that," he responded. "It's a really great honour. You already said that we are a little bit masochistic. So yeah, we will consider it a great challenge!"

That assertion comes as Owlcat, developers of Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, have reportedly beefed up their staff to around 600 people as they tackle two games. One is The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, the sci-fi RPG I alluded to in the intro, and the other is Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy.

Owlcat were originally founded in Russia, though they've since moved abroad to Cyprus and Armenia. As with a lot of Russian-founded studios, the developers have come under scrutiny for their stance toward and alleged business links with Russia's war on Ukraine. In particular, a couple of Owlcat staff have been accused of posting racial slurs about Ukrainians, and of doing recruitment work in the occupied territory of Crimea. You can read Owlcat's response to those two claims in Edwin's article about The Expanse: Osiris Reborn from April.

Mishulin was clear in these recent interviews that The Expanse isn't a sign the studio are moving away from CRPGs in the future. "We will continue to make CRPGs because we love them," he told PCGamesN. "We do not want to become stagnant. We will be trying different approaches for our RPG games, trying to find the best possible fit for the idea of the game."

Given they've already got at least two big games in the works, Owlcat don't seem in an ideal place to take on a Baldur's Gate 4, even if they were offered it by Hasbro, regardless of how suited they might be to the task. The daunting nature of taking on such a project while also trying to do something ambitious and Mass Effecty was one of the reasons Archetype passed on the opportunity, according to Ohlen. Unless one or both of The Expanse or Dark Heresy are dropped, I can't see Owlcat having the bandwidth to release a BG4 that can step out of BG3's massive shadow any time soon.

Still, perhaps they'll become a candidate if the task of following up Larian's entry gets pushed even further down the road by a Hasbro who are currently scaling back their in-house development efforts. %!s()

A member of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) said the violence, which continued into Sunday, involved heavy artillery and drones.

The two-year civil war in northern Ethiopian between the TPLF and the federal government, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, ended with an African Union-brokered peace deal in 2022.

But there are fears there could be a return to full-scale conflict as the deal has not been fully implemented and the TPLF is back in control of Tigray after pushing out the interim administration that was created as part of the resolution of the conflict.

There are also concerns that the fighting could become a proxy for the Sudanese civil war, with accusations that the warring parties there are backing opposing sides in Ethiopia.

Both the TPLF and the federal authorities blamed each other for Saturday's clashes.

The TPLF-led regional administration accused the federal government of launching an "open war" in the Shererina area. It said the offensive violated the peace agreement and was aimed at "subjugating and dividing" the people of Tigray.

The federal government and the federal army have not issued an official statement but minister Abraham Belay confirmed that clashes had occurred.

In a social media post, he accused the "TPLF clique" of starting the fighting and warned of "worse consequences" if the conflict continued.

The minister also called for dialogue, saying disputes should be resolved through peaceful negotiations rather than war.

"Today, it is better to reach out for peace before destruction," he wrote.

The death toll from the weekend's fighting was not clear but Sudanese medical and local sources told the AFP news agency that civilians and wounded fighters fled across the border, while witnesses reported hearing explosions, heavy gunfire, and aircraft throughout Saturday.

Shererina, a small locality in western Tigray, is strategically sensitive because western Tigray has been disputed between Tigray and Amhara, the regional state just to the south, since the civil war. %!s()