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.

April 24, 2026 Updates

Coupled orbital and interior structure evolution of lava planets
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.18682

Toward Inferring the Surface Fluxes of Biosignature Gases on Rocky Exoplanets from Telescope Spectra
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.21848

Planetary Exploration 3.0: A Roadmap for Software-Defined, Radically Adaptive Space Systems
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.20910

Orbital evolution of highly eccentric bodies embedded in a ringed accretion disc
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.21136

MINDS: Intertwined evolution of dust and gas in large planet-forming disks. A diversity driven by halted pebble drift?
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.21803

Spectral Kernel Dynamics for Planetary Surface Graphs: Distinction Dynamics and Topological Conservation
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.20887

Chaos Gated Tunneling Drives Molecular Reactivity in Astrophysical Environments
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.21005

Three-dimensional transport-induced chemistry on temperate sub-Neptune K2-18b, Part II: the combined effects of atmospheric dynamics and chemical reactions
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.07987

April 23, 2026 Updates

Stellar flare-driven evolution of primordial early exo-Earth atmospheres: Insights from a Young M Dwarf Flare model
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.20325

Sub-Neptunes Show a Stronger Correlation with Cold Jupiters than Super-Earths Especially in Metal-rich Systems
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.20203

Stability of Multiplanet Systems Through Hot Jupiter Destruction
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.19918

A giant solution to the disk mass budget problem of planet formation
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.19917

Observational constraints on the chemical tracers of planet formation history
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2026/04/aa57546-25/aa57546-25.html

The Effect of Large-scale Magnetic Fluctuations on Energetic Particle Profiles across Interplanetary Shocks
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae5523

A Test of Substellar Evolutionary Models with High-precision Ages from Asteroseismology and Gyrochronology for the Benchmark System HR 7672AB
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae4bdb

A Postperihelion Constraint on the CO2/H2O Ratio of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS from [O I] Forbidden Lines
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ae578d

Using Astrometry to Break Degeneracies in Stellar Surface Mapping
https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.11737

Spectral Response of SPHEREx
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4365/ae522c

The SPHEREx Ices Investigation: An Overview
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae53e0

Science from the In Situ Exploration of the Proxima Centauri System
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.20182

Journey from construction to excellence: How operations management and scientific results power LAMOST forward astronomy
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42524-026-6902-8

April 22, 2026 Updates

Status and Prospect of Secondary Battery Technologies in Space Applications: Challenges and the Future
https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/batt.70288

Synthetic biology-driven microbial protein factories for space
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S295061662600015X

Behavioral micro-foundations for the space commons: A policy toolkit
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048733326001022

Molecular Evolution of H2O:O2 Ices at Different Temperatures in Simulated Space Environments. II. Evolution of Reaction Pathways
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae579d

JWST Edge-on Disk Ice (JEDIce): Program Overview and Ice Survey Results
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae5961

Ice as a Photochemical Shield: Adsorption Energetics and Spectroscopic Modulation of Interstellar Thiocyanates HCSCN and HCSCCH in TMC-1
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.17536

ALMA Observations of Acetone in Hot Cores
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.19472

The multi-planet system TOI-5624: Four transiting sub-Neptunes with an outer companion revealed by transit-timing variations
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.15035

April 21, 2026 Updates

Epistemic Pluralism & Astrobiology
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10838-025-09760-6

Exoplanets: The Search for Earth’s Twin
https://link.springer.com/book/9783032226839

Core-Powered Mass-Loss of the Primary Atmospheres of Mini-Neptunes: Influence of Water Content in the Planet Interior and Evolution of the Host Star
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S0038094626600095

Euclid Space Warps citizen science project helps hunt for strong gravitational lenses
https://phys.org/news/2026-04-euclid-space-warps-citizen-science.html

Proton Irradiation of Primitive Atmospheres of Young Exoplanets and Early Earth: N2O Greenhouse Warming and Prebiotic Synthesis
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ae5491

Thin H2-dominated Atmospheres as Signposts of Magmatic Outgassing on Tidally Heated Terrestrial Exoplanets
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ae53e3

Carbon Cycle Imbalances on Arid Terrestrial Planets with Implications for Venus
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.16846

Characterizing Earth analogs may require a moderate or high-resolution spectrograph
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.17554

JWST Exoplanetary Worlds and Elemental Survey (JEWELS) II: Condensation Temperature Trends and Galactic Chemical Evolution in JWST Planet-Hosting Stars
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.18115

Impact of Cold Jupiter Scattering on the Mean-Motion Resonance of Inner Small Planets
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.18252

Rapid and Predictive Planet Population Synthesis Model (RAPPS) I. Upgraded model and resulting synthetic populations
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.18273

Sensitivity of Dry Lava Planet Atmospheric Emission Spectra to Changes in Lava Compositions
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.18301

The T16 Planet Hunt: 10,000 New Planet Candidates from TESS Cycle 1 and the Confirmation of a Hot Jupiter Around TIC 183374187
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.18579

Technique-agnostic exoplanet demography for the Roman era — I. Testing a demography retrieval framework using simulated Kepler-like transit datasets
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24401

April 20, 2026 Updates

Implications for the formation of Oort cloud-like structures and interstellar comets in dense environments
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2026/04/aa54978-25/aa54978-25.html

TOI-1259Ab: A warm Jupiter orbiting a K-dwarf white-dwarf binary on a low-obliquity orbit
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2026/04/aa56348-25/aa56348-25.html

Extending TESS flare frequency distributions with CHEOPS: Power-law versus lognormal
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2026/04/aa57721-25/aa57721-25.html

To boldly listen…
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0262407926006184

PlanetNet-MMG: A Robust Multi-Modal Graph-Based Deep Learning Model for Exoplanet Candidate Classification
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0957417426013096

Uniform Reinterpretation of Rocky Exoplanet Secondary Eclipse Observations and the Impact of Stellar and Orbital Uncertainties
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.15421

The CARMENES search for exoplanets around M dwarfs. A homogeneous catalogue of projected rotational velocities accounting for limb-darkening
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.15428

ExoNet: Multimodal Deep Learning for TESS Exoplanet Candidate Identification via Phase-Folded Light Curves, Stellar Parameters, and Multi-Head Attention Fusion
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.15560

A gem system with a lava world and a habitable zone sub-Neptune orbiting TOI-1752
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.15816

Benchmarking Two Chemical Networks used in General Circulation Models of Hot Jupiters
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.15850

Beyond the mass-radius plane: Integrated radiative-convective and interior structure simulations of the exoplanet continuum
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.15891

TTV-Not-So-Fast: Uniqueness and Degeneracy in Perturbing Planet Parameters
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.16297

The Neptunian ridge as a natural outcome of high-eccentricity tidal migration
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.16300