Sunday, September 13, 2026

Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft achieved the first-ever successful laser ranging experiment during an asteroid flyby, firing laser pulses at asteroid Torifune from distances of 20 and 15 kilometers while traveling at 5.3 km/s during its Extended Mission.^[1]

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team successfully activated the mission's Coronagraph Instrument on September 1, which will block starlight to view planets and dusty disks around nearby stars—the most advanced such technology ever flown in space.^[2]

New infrared analysis suggests Mercury's surface contains only about 37% silicon dioxide, up to 25% less than previous estimates, indicating its volcanic rocks formed from hotter, more deeply melted mantle material billions of years ago.^[3]

Leaders of BRICS nations gathered in New Delhi for the 18th BRICS Summit focused on trade, investment, and global conflicts, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosting Russian, Chinese, and Iranian presidents alongside counterparts from other member states.^[4]

American tennis player Ben Shelton defeated Frances Tiafoe 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 7-5 in the US Open semifinal and will face Alexander Zverev on Sunday, with a chance to become the first American man to win a Grand Slam singles title since Andy Roddick in 2003.^[5]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he is willing to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin at the December G20 summit in Miami if both leaders attend, though the Kremlin rejected the proposal and insisted any meeting must take place in Moscow.^[6]

East Antarctica gained a record 695 billion tons of ice between 2021 and 2023, temporarily slowing the continent's long-term decline, after a patch of unusually warm tropical ocean altered atmospheric circulation and funneled heavy snowfall toward the ice sheet.^[7]

Researchers at Binghamton University developed a Wordle-solving strategy that succeeds 99% of the time by using Shannon entropy to focus on information gain rather than likely answers, maximizing what each guess reveals about the solution.^[8]

The Italian version of Netflix Korea's hit competition series 'Physical: 100' premiered on Friday, marking the franchise's first fully overseas-produced adaptation after the Korean original became the first unscripted Korean series to top Netflix's global chart.^[9]

Climate simulations indicate the Southern Ocean could shift from absorbing carbon dioxide to releasing it after global emissions decline, potentially weakening the effectiveness of climate mitigation efforts for decades.^[10]