Recent weeks have seen major developments in planetary science across the United States and worldwide. In a significant policy move, the United States Senate advanced a spending bill that preserves funding for NASA science in 2025 at seven point three billion dollars, protecting crucial planetary science missions including the Near-Earth Object Surveyor, Dragonfly, and the Roman Space Telescope. This legislative stance counters earlier proposed cuts and signals a continued commitment to supporting both ongoing and upcoming planetary missions. The bill also boosts funding for missions previously at risk of cancellation, such as OSIRIS-APEX, the New Frontiers program, and the U.S. partnership in Europe’s Rosalind Franklin Mars rover, although the budget still faces political uncertainties before it becomes law, according to The Planetary Society.

In research news from Purdue University, planetary scientists contributed to resolving a longstanding mystery about Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Dawn spacecraft data had hinted at an unusually water-rich composition for Ceres, yet the preservation of deep craters seemed inconsistent with a surface dominated by ice. Recent modeling by a team including Mike Sori and Jennifer Scully from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory suggests that Ceres’ upper crust contains a thick ice-rich layer that froze over time, protecting its deeper craters and helping scientists better understand its geological evolution.

Meanwhile, NASA’s Perseverance rover in Jezero Crater on Mars may be holding samples that will allow scientists to date the activity of what could be a newly discovered Martian volcano. Data from Perseverance indicate the existence of volcanic rocks near the landing site, and if confirmed, this would mark the first time in planetary science that the timing of volcanic activity has been precisely determined on another planet, as discussed by researchers at Purdue and in the publication New Scientist.

Outside the United States, a new interstellar object dubbed Three I Atlas has been detected, marking only the third such object identified as having entered our solar system from interstellar space. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is closely tracking this visitor, studying both its trajectory and composition, which may offer clues about the types of materials found between the stars. Europe has also begun construction on the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, or LISA, a pioneering gravitational wave observatory that will operate in space, promising new insights into both planetary and cosmic evolution.

In the realm of planetary imaging, NASA’s SPHEREx mission released striking infrared images of interstellar clouds like the Vela Molecular Ridge, while New Horizons continues to reveal Pluto’s jagged landscapes. The International Space Station provided vivid photos of the aurora australis from orbit over the Southern Ocean. Collectively, these developments reveal a planetary science community that is vibrant, well-funded in the United States, and increasingly global in its pursuit of understanding planetary formation, habitability, and the broader processes shaping worlds throughout our solar system and beyond.

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