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Free grassroots football sessions run by club charities are being taken seriously as a tool for social change, offering young people a trusted space that keeps them off the streets. Independent evaluations report reductions of up to 82% in crime and antisocial behaviour during session times.
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft used a flyby of Mars as a gravity-assist slingshot toward the metal-rich asteroid Psyche, calibrating its instruments and capturing a month-long time-lapse of the Red Planet along the way.
NOAA’s GAIA initiative (Geospatial Artificial Intelligence for Animals) pairs very-high-resolution satellite imagery with machine learning to detect endangered whales — notably North Atlantic right whales and Cook Inlet belugas — across vast, hard-to-survey oceans, in partnership with the USGS, Microsoft AI for Good and others.
Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers detected Beta Pictoris d, a giant planet that had been hidden inside the dusty disk of one of the sky’s most studied young star systems, 63 light-years away.
The numbat, Western Australia’s striped marsupial emblem, has been downlisted on the IUCN Red List from Endangered to Near Threatened. From around 300 animals in the late 1970s, careful predator control has lifted numbers to an estimated 2,000–3,000 across five secure populations.
One of the oldest cities in Europe has its museum back. The Archaeological Museum of Argos reopened on July 1, 2026, after twelve years closed, with more than double its exhibition space and nine ancient vessels repatriated from Budapest at the heart of the new displays.
Up to 100 eastern barred bandicoots — a marsupial declared extinct in the wild in 1991 — have been released on Phillip Island near Melbourne. A world-first genetic rescue mixing mainland and Tasmanian animals has produced a fitter, more resilient population.
Texas A&M researchers developed a nasal spray of stem-cell–derived particles that, in animal studies, calmed chronic brain inflammation and restored memory after just two doses, with benefits lasting months.
A University of Manchester-led team used AI and 35 years of Landsat imagery to produce the first wall-to-wall map of the Cerrado-Amazon transition zone in Brazil, giving conservation planners the empirical baseline they had been missing.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, built to survey dark energy, dark matter and exoplanets across enormous swaths of sky, could launch as early as September 2026, well ahead of its original deadline.
On May 15, 2026, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft swung within about 4,500 kilometers of Mars in a gravity-assist flyby, borrowing the planet’s pull to steer toward the metal-rich asteroid 16 Psyche, where it is due to arrive in 2029.
The Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, set to become the world’s largest dedicated space for the art form, will open in 2026 in a restored 18th-century waterworks in Clerkenwell, London.
NASA’s Hubble took the most detailed visible-light images yet of an enormous planet-forming disk around the star nicknamed “Dracula’s Chivito,” revealing a structure 40 times wider than our solar system and far more turbulent than expected.
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers found that XMM-VID1-2075, a massive galaxy from less than two billion years after the Big Bang, shows no sign of rotation, a surprise that may point to a head-on collision of two counter-spinning galaxies.
A ten-year satellite study of more than 70 whale sharks across Indonesian seas has revealed hidden migration routes and even a nursery — and is now helping establish a new marine protected area in Saleh Bay to safeguard the world’s largest fish.
A machine-learning tool called RAVEN combed through NASA’s TESS data and validated 118 new exoplanets plus more than 2,000 promising candidates, including rare ultra-fast and “Neptunian desert” worlds.
New satellite data from the University of Maryland and World Resources Institute, released April 29, show tropical primary forest loss fell 36% in 2025 from 2024's record — Brazil cut non-fire primary loss 41% to its lowest level on record.
Britain's Vertical Aerospace completed a piloted transition flight of its VX4 electric air taxi, switching from hover to wingborne cruise and back under regulatory oversight, a milestone toward quiet, zero-emission urban flight.
The James Webb Space Telescope detected unexpected water-ice clouds in the atmosphere of Epsilon Indi Ab, a giant planet several times the mass of Jupiter, offering a rare close look at weather on a distant world.
NASA astronaut and Navy veteran Suni Williams, who ran a marathon aboard the International Space Station in 2007, ran the 2026 Boston Marathon on 21 April and was named the Boston Athletic Association Patriots Award recipient.
Astronomers confirmed GJ 887 d, a super-Earth with about 6 Earth masses orbiting in the habitable zone of a nearby red dwarf star, making it the second-nearest known habitable-zone exoplanet.
NOAA Fisheries built GAIA, a cloud-based system that pairs very high-resolution satellite imagery with machine learning to detect endangered whales such as North Atlantic right whales and Cook Inlet belugas, with an open-source annotation tool from Microsoft AI for Good.
NASA's Artemis II mission launched on April 1, 2026, sending four astronauts on a flyby around the Moon — the first crewed voyage beyond low Earth orbit in over 50 years.
QuiX Quantum, NASA, and the University of Twente demonstrated a photon distillation technique that reduced quantum computing errors by 2.2 times, a key step toward practical quantum computers.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has detected water vapor in the atmosphere of TRAPPIST-1e, marking the first confirmed detection of water on a rocky planet in a star's habitable zone outside our solar system.
Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope detected a thick, water-rich atmosphere around TOI-561 b, a scorching rocky world once thought too extreme to keep any gas at all.
New York’s New Museum reopened on the Bowery with a 60,000-square-foot expansion that doubles its gallery space, offering free admission its opening weekend and an exhibition featuring over 200 contributors.
The FDA approved Neffy, the first needle-free nasal epinephrine spray for children aged 4 and older. The breakthrough represents the first major update to emergency allergy treatment in over 30 years, eliminating the fear and complexity of injectable epinephrine for the one in 13 children affected by food allergies.
Brazil's national space research institute INPE reported that deforestation in the Amazon rainforest fell by 50% in 2023 compared to the previous year, the sharpest annual decline in decades, following the restoration of environmental enforcement under President Lula.
Astronomers have confirmed GJ 887 d, a super-Earth exoplanet orbiting in the habitable zone of a nearby red dwarf star, making it the second-nearest known habitable zone planet to our solar system.
Emergency agencies used open AI mapping pipelines to process satellite and drone imagery in near real time, improving rescue prioritization after floods.
Satellite data from Brazil's space agency show Amazon forest clearing from August 2025 to January 2026 fell to its lowest for that period since 2014. Environment Minister Marina Silva says the country could record its lowest deforestation since monitoring began in 1988 if the trend holds.
Little Break in Ann Arbor offers affordable on-site childcare while parents work nearby, creating a supportive community for working families.
The reproductive spores of a moss species were able to survive the vacuum of space during a 9-month stint outside the International Space Station, returning with an 86% germination rate.
The Knepp rewilding estate in Sussex has recorded a 900% increase in breeding birds over 20 years, proving what's possible when nature is given space to recover.
NASA announces the discovery of vivianite and greigite on Mars, minerals that form in the presence of water and could provide clues about the planet's wet past.
Target team members volunteered 1 million hours in 2025 for the tenth consecutive year, and in 2026 the company's Bullseye Builds program will invest $1m to reimagine shared community spaces — parks, schools and resource centers — in 13 neighborhoods nationwide, based on what residents say they need.
A volunteer scanning NASA data discovered a potentially habitable exoplanet that professional astronomers had missed, and now the world's most powerful telescopes will investigate it.
In Ann Arbor, Michigan, the nonprofit Little Break blends a coworking space with on-site child care, letting parents work while paid staff watch their kids next door. Founded by Ariel Wan, it recreates "that village feeling" of communal child-rearing in a country where half of kids live in child care deserts.
The James Webb Space Telescope captures stunning new details of the Helix Nebula, revealing the dying breaths of a star transforming into raw ingredients for new worlds.
Memphis unveiled the curatorial vision for its new downtown art museum, a Herzog & de Meuron-designed building on the Mississippi River set to open in December 2026 with 600% more free public space and a mass-timber structure.
The ozone hole over Antarctica shrank to its fifth-smallest size in more than 30 years, according to NASA and NOAA. The reduction is a direct result of the Montreal Protocol, which regulated ozone-depleting substances worldwide.
In a remarkable year for planetary science, astronomers confirmed the discovery of over 100 previously unknown moons orbiting planets in our solar system during 2025, reshaping our understanding of the outer planets.
In just its early observations, the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory found asteroid 2025 MN45, which spins once every 1.88 minutes, the fastest known for its size, alongside about 1,900 new asteroids.
Photojournalist Sebastiao Salgado and his wife Lelia spent over two decades planting 2.5 million trees, transforming a degraded cattle ranch into a thriving nature preserve visible from space.
Japan's kodomo shokudo — community cafeterias offering free or low-cost meals to children and neighbors — reached a record 12,601 sites in fiscal 2025, up more than 1,700 from the year before. The nonprofit Musubie says the growth reflects efforts to build welcoming spaces.
Queens Public Library broke ground in December 2025 on a new 39 million dollar Rego Park branch — a three-story, 18,000-square-foot building with dedicated spaces for teens, children and adults. A mobile library keeps service running during construction.
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, an international team watched the low-density planet WASP-107b lose helium into a vast cloud stretching nearly ten times the planet’s radius.
NASA and NOAA report that the 2025 Antarctic ozone hole was the fifth smallest since 1992, with its season ending nearly three weeks earlier than usual. Scientists credit the Montreal Protocol, which has cut ozone-depleting chemicals in the stratosphere by roughly a third from their 2000 peak. Full recovery remains on track for the late 2060s.
Astronaut Sunita Williams, stranded on the ISS due to technical issues, broke the women's record for total spacewalk time with 62 hours outside the station.
Public libraries across the US and Europe reported record visitor numbers in 2025, as they expanded their roles as community gathering spaces, digital literacy centers, and cultural venues.
Community gardens in major US cities saw a 40% increase in participation in 2025, providing fresh food to underserved neighborhoods and becoming vital social gathering spaces.
UNDP's RAPIDA tool uses AI, satellite imagery, GIS and social-media data to deliver fast post-crisis damage assessments; after the Herat earthquake in Afghanistan it helped narrow down affected areas and estimate damaged homes and debris.
