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.

February 10, 2026 updates

Orbital Parameters and Planetary Radius of 55 Cancri e from TESS Data
https://www.mdpi.com/2674-0346/5/1/3

SOLAR External: 1I/ʻOumuamua — Coherence Signature on SOLAR Baseline (CP364)
https://zenodo.org/records/18480713

Exoplanet Detection via Saline Ionization: Ionic Atmospheres as Coherent Biosignatures
https://zenodo.org/records/18559377

The chemical habitability of Earth and rocky planets prescribed by core formation
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02775-z

The quest for Magrathea planets – II. Orbital stability of exoplanets formed around double white dwarfs
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2026/02/aa52890-24/aa52890-24.html

Aligned, Misaligned, and Polar Orbits of Hot Jupiters: Measuring Spin-orbit Angles via Doppler Tomography with HARPS-N
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ae3b27

A High-resolution Near-Ultraviolet Transmission Spectrum of KELT-9b: Mg II and Fe II Escaping from the Hottest Known Giant Planet
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ae30e2

Preperihelion CN Production Rate of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ae3dd7

Somaforming on an alien Earth
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718526000278

Beyond the Hyperbola: The Torque‑Entrained Interstellar Object Taxonomy (TEIOT) and the Coherent Prototype 3I/ATLAS
https://zenodo.org/records/18523910

A New Strategy for Using Spectroscopic Phase Curves to Characterize Non-Transiting Planets
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.07127

Imagining the Alien: Human Projections and Cognitive Limitations
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.07284

Impact of embedded circumplanetary winds on the circumstellar disk: I. Reshaping the local accretion environment
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.08087

JWST spectral retrieval of cold directly imaged planet WD0806 b and the first measurement of altitude-dependent KZZ in exoplanet atmospheres
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.08200

RedDots: Multiplanet system around M dwarf GJ 887 in the solar neighborhood
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.08929

Two Robust Interstellar Meteor Candidates in the Post-2018 CNEOS Fireball Database
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.08956

The Great Filter hypothesis — a new Great Filter?
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.08188

February 09, 2026 Updates

Memory-Driven Wavelet Network for lightweight infrared image super-resolution
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S135044952600085X

Life and AI at NASA: An Ethnography of How Scientists and Engineers Make Tools to Explore Other Worlds
https://research.chalmers.se/publication/550000

Hypothesis: The Retrograde Debris Complex (3I/ATLAS, Niku, Drac) as the Kinematic Signature of “Planet Nine”
https://zenodo.org/records/18468901

Is There Life on 3I/ATLAS?
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/is-there-life-on-3i-atlas-3dbb31ed13bf

The Existence of Extraterrestrial Civilizations and Their Implications for Political Philosophy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/400299217_The_Existence_of_Extraterrestrial_Civilizations_and_Their_Implications_for_Political_Philosophy

A parametric model for externally irradiated protoplanetary disks with photoevaporative winds
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.02011

Probing habitable regions with SRG/eROSITA
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.06124

AB Aur, a Rosetta stone for studies of planet formation (IV): C/O estimates from CS and SO interferometric observations
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.06551

The effect of JWST/NIRSpec data reduction on the retrieval of WASP-39b atmospheric properties
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.06722

Earth-Cosmos Binary
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S001632872600025X

The Origins of Planets for ArieL (OPAL) Key Science Project: The end-to-end planet formation campaign for the ESA space mission Ariel
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213133726000053

February 06, 2026 updates

Planetary analog sites in the Indian subcontinent and the Indian Ocean: Underexplored environments suited for astrobiological and space research
https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/10330/

Reproductive biomedicine in space: implications for gametogenesis, fertility and ethical considerations in the era of commercial spaceflight
https://www.rbmojournal.com/article/S1472-6483(25)00638-8/fulltext

Long-duration human spaceflight induces atrophy in the left ventricular papillary muscles
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41526-025-00531-7

WISE/CatWISE Constraints on Dysonian Waste-heat Technosignatures in Nearby Galaxies
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ae31e9

Toward Reliable Interpretations of Small-exoplanet Compositions: Comparisons and Considerations of Equations of State and Materials Used in Common Rocky Planet Models
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ae2ea2

Organic Acid Chemistry in ISM: Detection of Formic Acid and its Prebiotic Chemistry in Hot Core G358.93−0.03 MM1
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1674-4527/ae2f4b

Impact of magnetic field gradients on the development of the magneto-rotational instability: Applications to binary neutron star mergers and protoplanetary disks
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2026/02/aa55395-25/aa55395-25.html

High Pressure Formation of the Eight-Fold Coordinated Post-Post Spinel MgFe2O4
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025GL120161

SOLAR External: 2I/Borisov — Coherence Signature on SOLAR Baseline (CP364)
https://zenodo.org/records/18458621

The Discovery of Alien Life on an Interstellar Object and the Future of Humanity: A Study of Scientific, Philosophical, Political, and Civilizational Transformation.
https://zenodo.org/records/18496089

ALMA 873 µm Polarization Observations of the PDS 70 Disk
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.05247

Habitability of Tidally Heated H2-Dominated Exomoons around Free-Floating Planets
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.05378

The Effects of Non-ideal Mixing in Planetary Magma Oceans and Atmospheres
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.05917

The Effect of Tidal Heating and Volatile Budgets on the Outgassed Atmosphere of 55 Cancri e
https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.23235

February 05, 2026 updates

Resolving the terrestrial planet-forming region of HD 172555 with ALMA: I. Post-impact dust distribution
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2026/02/aa57986-25/aa57986-25.html

New Observations and TTV Analyses of the Exoplanetary Systems WASP-36 and XO-3
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1674-4527/ae2f4d

Sundivers performance analysis with locally optimal control law
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S027311772600164X

Facilities to detect and confirm transiting exoplanets
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/chapter/referencework/abs/pii/B978044321439400047X

Highlights from Exoplanet Observations by the James Webb Space Telescope
https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-3-319-30648-3_216-1

Propulsion Trades for a 2035-2040 Solar Gravitational Lens Mission
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.04198

A Two-Dimensional Analytic Solution for the Generation of Hyperbolic Trajectories Via A Single Close Encounter with Applications To Interstellar Objects
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.04806

The EXoplanet Climate Infrared TElescope (EXCITE): A balloon-borne mission to measure spectroscopic phase curves of transiting hot Jupiters
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.04840

First Astrometric Limits on Binary Planets and Exomoons orbiting β Pictoris b
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.00160

February 04, 2026 updates

Faster than Light Travel at Last? (via Metric Engineering of the Soliton Displacement Field: Theoretical Propulsion Frameworks for the Pathfinder Mark V-B), No Exotic Matter Required
https://rxiverse.org/abs/2601.0048

Hybrid Linear–Cyclic Topological Structures for Digital Sequence Encoding and Technosignature Analysis
https://zenodo.org/records/18473473

Reproductive biomedicine in space: implications for gametogenesis, fertility and ethical considerations in the era of commercial spaceflight
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1472648325006388

ExoplaNeT accRetion mOnitoring sPectroscopic surveY (ENTROPY): II. Time series of Balmer line profiles of Delorme 1(AB)b
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2026/02/aa54644-25/aa54644-25.html

SPHEREx Reobservation of Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS in 2025 December: Detection of Increased Post-perihelion Activity, Refractory Coma Dust, and New Coma Gas Species
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/ae3f95

Earth-Cosmos Binary
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S001632872600025X

Visual inspection of potential exocomet transits identified through machine learning and statistical methods
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.02701

Imaging Venus-like Worlds: Spectral, Polarimetric, and UV Diagnostics for the Habitable Worlds Observatory
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.02728

Ultra-hot Jupiter atmospheres at high spectral resolution
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.02845

ExoDNN: Boosting exoplanet detection with artificial intelligence. Application to Gaia Data Release 3
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.02910

The ESO SupJup Survey IX: Isotopic evidence of a recent formation for Luhman 16AB
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.03409

Atmospheric characterization of HIP 67522 b with VLT/CRIRES+. VLT/CRIRES+ suggests a heavier planet and hints at deuterium fractionation
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.03498

Architectures of Planetary Systems II: Trends with Host Star Mass and Metallicity
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.03657

Probing Atmospheric Escape Through the Near-Infrared Helium Triplet
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.03667

Observational imprints of tidal internal gravity wave dissipation in star-planet systems
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.03723

Mapping the Orbital Landscape of Perturbing Planet Solutions for Single-Planet Systems with TTVs
https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.10493