Interstellar Updates

 

These are items of interest to the interstellar exploration community that we’ve found in our quest for information that will help us advance toward our goals.  If you know of anything we’ve overlooked, or any sources of such information we should monitor, or if you would like to be added to our IRG-updates mailing list and receive these updates in you email every weekday, please send that information to info@irg.space.

You can now search our database of interstellar updates and find items of interest to you.

August 20, 2026 Updates

From bioinspired wings to hydrogen propulsion: a mechanical engineering perspective on next-generation UAVs
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2631-8695/ae94ff

Asgard/NOTT: Status of laboratory nulling performance
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.18951

The Inbound Gas and Dust Evolution of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS from Optical Spectroscopy and Multi-band Photometry
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.18371

Wet Removal and Cloud Enhancement: The Microphysics of Cloud-Haze Interactions on Sub-Neptunes
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.19100

A Search for helium in the atmospheres of three sub-Neptunes and a super-Earth around M-dwarfs
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.19030

Stellar Abundances as Probes of Rocky Exoplanet Interiors: The Mantle Composition and Mineralogy of GJ 486b
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.18457

August 19, 2026 Updates

Astrobiology and the Transformation of Scientific Epistemology
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.17728

Discovery of an Eccentric Hot Super-Jupiter Leaving the Transiting Geometry of the Early-A-type star TOI-1355
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.17387

HD 715 b, a Warm Jupiter Orbiting a Massive Subgiant Discovered from a Single TESS Transit
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ae9095

A Catalog of Homogeneously Derived Stellar Parameters for Spectroscopic Survey Stars
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.17734

The Roman Coronagraph Community Participation Program: data reduction pipeline astrometric calibration
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.17985

Turbulence Can Persist in the Inner Regions of Weakly Ionized Planet-forming Disks
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae8fc9

Direct Retrieval of Protoplanetary Disk Dust Properties Using Auto-differentiable Gaussian Processes and Their Application to the HD 169142 Disk
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae89ad

August 13, 2026 Updates

High-temperature photovoltaics for solar-electric Oberth maneuvers: ton-class payload feasibility for interstellar-precursor missions
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.11113

Perspectives on optical frequency comb research: sources, performance, and applications
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6501/ae8b11

TOI-7475 spectroscopic follow up – detection of a massive hot Jupiter on an eccentric orbit
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.09679

The final design of GMagAO-X: high-contrast imaging at first-light of the GMT
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.10212

Probing Planet Formation with JWST Spectroscopy of IC 348: Sustained Diversity but Limited Chemical Evolution and Pebble Drift
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae88eb

August 12, 2026 Updates

On the Utility of Transmission Color Analysis i: Differentiating Super-Earths and Sub-Neptunes
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ac0e2c

Intense but Harmless: Exo-Space Weather Around an M Dwarf with a Single-Hemisphere Dynamo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.11087

Toward a unified framework for helium observations and interpretation of atmospheric escape
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.10707

Detecting Extraterrestrial Civilizations that Employ an Earth-level Deep Space Network
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/adf6b0

The First Remotely Detected Biosignature May Not Be the Most Common: Implications for JWST and HWO
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ae84cc

1 2 440