Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences | New and Recent Articles

Predicting the geoeffectiveness of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) is a core issue in operational space weather forecasting. In recent years, deep learning methods have been increasingly applied to CME geoeffectiveness prediction. However, existing studies mostly rely on single data sources, with image-based and parameter-based approaches each having their own limitations and failing to achieve eff…

IntroductionPrecipitable water vapor (PWV) is an important parameter for characterizing the spatiotemporal variability of atmospheric water vapor. Accurate realtime PWV retrieval is essential for weather monitoring and extreme weather forecasting. Currently, the real-time PWV retrieval mainly depends on state space representation (SSR) correction products provided by the International GNSS Servic…

IntroductionDeep space exploration, as a critical means for humanity to understand and investigate the evolutionary history of the universe, has entered a phase of rapid development. A single deep space navigation mode struggles to meet the high-precision and high-reliability requirements for long-duration mission operations in highly dynamic and extreme environments. Hence, multi-mode resilient …

This paper discusses the broad science case for obtaining milliarcsecond to microarcsecond astronomical imaging resolution in the soft to medium-energy X-ray band (∼0.5 to ∼8 keV). Astronomy across much of the electromagnetic spectrum has been fundamentally transformed with a rapid increase in ground-based and space-based capabilities to examine celestial objects on small scales that relate direc…

Gravitational-wave detection provides humanity with unique access to extreme astrophysical and cosmological phenomena. In space-based missions, however, the Doppler frequency pulling induced by orbital motion severely limits the precise extraction of gravitational-wave signals. This work shows that by introducing properly designed low-pass filters into established laser arm-locking systems, it is…

The subauroral region is located equatorward of the auroral oval, where important magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere dynamical processes take place. Historically, low-Earth orbit satellites as well as ground-based imagers and radars have provided important information about the region. However, in recent years it has become increasingly clear that there are several unexplored aspects of the re…

Recent observations, particularly from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), have revealed unexpectedly massive compact objects and rapidly emerging galactic structures at very early cosmic times. Although these findings do not invalidate the empirical success of the standard ΛCDM cosmological model, they expose conceptual and interpretive concerns that motivate a reassessment of its foundationa…

IntroductionGenerative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is rapidly transforming scientific workflows, yet empirical data on its adoption within national research infrastructures remain scarce.MethodsThis study presents the results of a comprehensive survey conducted at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in spring 2025, collecting 371 responses (∼20% of the workforce). Data were…

The Space Weather UnderGround (SWUG) program is an educational outreach initiative in which high school and undergraduate students learn heliophysics fundamentals and build low-cost fluxgate magnetometers. The program has three primary goals: (1) training the future Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) workforce, (2) developing a cost-effective magnetometer network across the …

Signal-in-Space Monitoring Accuracy (SISMA) is regarded as a key indicator for the integrity monitoring of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS-3). It is used to evaluate the quality of broadcast ephemeris in real time. However, the conventional SISMA estimation method in the BDS-3 ground operation and control system is severely constrained by the deployment of ground monitoring stations, …

Tropospheric delay is a major error source for the high-accuracy Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) technique due to rapid water vapor variations. The Niell mapping function (NMF) and Global Mapping Function (GMF) are extensively applied to convert zenith tropospheric delay to slant delays for real-time deep-space VLBI operations. In this study, we quantitatively evaluate the performance of…

IntroductionGeomagnetically induced currents (GICs) pose a critical space weather hazard to ground-based conductive infrastructure. Previous studies have commonly identified large GIC events using daily maximum amplitudes exceeding 10 A, a criterion that may obscure the detailed temporal structure of GIC disturbances.MethodsIn this study, we apply an improved identification criterion to systemati…

We report a Kelvin–Helmholtz vortex (KHV) event observed at the duskside magnetopause boundary layer by the magnetospheric multiscale (MMS) satellites in conjunction with auroral beads detected in the high-latitude ionosphere by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) on 27 September 2016. During the KHV event, the MMS spacecraft were located in the low-latitude boundary layer and wer…

In this pilot study, we investigate the known PN population in M 33, a nearby spiral galaxy, at a distance of ≈840 kpc, using data from the DR3 of the Javalambre-Photometric Local Universe Survey (J-PLUS), a 12-band photometric dataset extensively used to identify Hα line emitters. From the 143 known PNe of M 33, the photometry of only 13 is present in the J-PLUS catalog, as available on the J-PL…

In December 2023 an interplanetary coronal mass ejection impacted Mars and left the magnetosphere in a highly disturbed state that was observed by NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission. One consequence of this space weather impact was the driving of large amplitude (∼50 nT) steepened magnetic structures that propagated into the dayside ionosphere. Here we focus on electrom…

Natural impulsive events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and thunderstorms, as well as anthropogenic events such as rocket launches and atmospheric re-entries, can generate acoustic-gravity waves (AGWs) that propagate in the upper-atmosphere and produce traveling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs) observable with GNSS total electron content (TEC) measurements. We developed an algorithm for …

The Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission is a major but prohibitively expensive goal of planetary exploration. This article presents a conceptual single-launch integrated mission architecture that consolidates entry, descent, and landing (EDL), surface sample retrieval, Mars ascent, and Earth-return functions (traditionally distributed across three separate spacecraft) into one capsule-class vehicle …

The problem of understanding how a newly forming solar system manages to lose angular momentum from the stage of collapsing core to the final main sequence phase is a long-standing one. This is especially pertinent regarding the evolution of the accretion disks. Both theoretical studies and recent observational surveys have questioned the paradigm of viscosity-driven disk evolution, while at the …