WashU McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences

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WashU McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences

The McDonnell Center plays a key role in the space sciences program at WashU.

10/07/2026

McDonnell Center Postdoc Zifan Lin has authored a News & Views article in Nature Astronomy. In his commentary, Lin discusses what a possible “second-generation” planet around a white dwarf could reveal about how planets form and survive around dead stars, and why white dwarfs may be promising places to search for planets and even signs of life.

Read the article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02982-8

10/05/2026

What happens as matter spirals toward a spinning black hole? 🕳️

New simulations are revealing the turbulent dance of plasma, magnetic fields and particles near these extreme objects.

The study, published in Physical Review Letters as an Editors’ Suggestion, provides a new look at how matter accretes onto spinning black holes and how the conditions for powerful jets can arise.

🔗 Read more: https://mcss.washu.edu/news/spinning-black-holes

09/17/2026

🌠 One meteorite. Two asteroids. A possible shared origin.

A rare meteorite found in Morocco may share an ancient parent body with asteroids Bennu and Ryugu.

In a new study led by WashU's Megan Broussard, researchers found compositional similarities linking the meteorite OC002 to samples returned from both asteroids.

🔗 Read the story: https://mcss.washu.edu/news/meteorite-linked-bennu-ryugu

09/10/2026

🪐 Can planets trigger stellar flares?

WashU astronomers Nathan Whitsett and have identified several exoplanet systems that may offer clues to one of the biggest challenges in exoplanet science: measuring planetary magnetic fields.

Using NASA’s TESS observations and a new analysis pipeline called ardor, they found intriguing patterns in the timing of stellar flares. TOI-1062 b and Gliese 49 b emerged as particularly promising candidates for magnetic interactions between planets and their host stars.

As Whitsett puts it, the planets can “magnetically talk” with their stars.

🔭 Read the story:
https://mcss.washu.edu/news/hunt-magnetic-interactions-between-stars-and-planets

09/08/2026

🔬 What can a tiny flaw in a diamond tell us about the Moon?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

MCSS fellow Chong Zu uses quantum sensors to investigate everything from lunar rocks and materials under extreme pressure to living cells and X-ray telescopes.

His goal? To develop quantum technologies that help scientists make measurements conventional tools can't easily capture.

"I want it to be useful to other people and other fields, so they can use it to solve their own problems."

Read our latest MCSS Faculty Focus on Chong Zu and his work to make quantum sensing useful to scientists across disciplines.

👉https://mcss.washu.edu/news/chong-zu-brings-quantum-sensing-questions-across-science

09/01/2026

Roman has launched! 🚀

Members of Tansu Daylan’s AstroMusers research group traveled to Florida to watch NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launch Sunday morning.

Five graduate students, a postdoc and two collaborators joined Daylan for the launch, which they watched from Alan Shepard Park along Florida’s Atlantic coast.

Roman will open a new window on the universe, and WashU researchers are already preparing to make the most of its unprecedented observations.

📷 Photos courtesy of Tansu Daylan

08/24/2026

MCSS fellow Scott VanBommel is first author on a new study of Curiosity’s discovery of pristine, or “native,” sulfur on Mars. The research provides a snapshot of environmental conditions on Mars roughly 3 billion years ago.

Even better: the paper is the cover story of the Aug. 20 issue of Science. 🔴

The study was co-led by VanBommel and Jeff Berger of NASA’s Johnson Space Center and included EEPS staff scientist Abigail Knight and EEPS postdoctoral researcher John Christian.

Read the WashU story: https://mcss.washu.edu/news/pristine-sulfur-preserves-snapshot-ancient-mars

Read the paper in Science: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu5501

08/20/2026

Where did Mars’ methane go? 🔴

Methane has been detected on Mars, but observations from orbiters, rovers and Earth-based telescopes have produced a puzzling picture: methane sometimes appears to spike, then seemingly disappears.

New laboratory experiments led by Alian Wang suggest that electrically charged dust generated during Martian dust activity could rapidly destroy methane, offering a possible explanation for one of the Red Planet’s biggest mysteries.

Using SCHILGAR, a planetary simulation chamber developed by Wang’s team, researchers recreated conditions similar to Mars’ near-surface atmosphere and exposed carbon dioxide and methane to controlled electrostatic discharges. The experiments showed that these discharges can generate highly reactive species that rapidly break down methane.

Read the full story: https://mcss.washu.edu/news/martian-methane

08/19/2026

🌎 What do earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, changing climates and solar storms have in common?

Michael Wysession, professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences and an MCSS Fellow, explores how geology and other forces of nature have shaped human history in a new 24-lecture video course from The Great Courses.

Learn more about Wysession’s course, The World’s Most Fascinating Geologic Events, and how he brings Earth science to a broad audience. Read the story: https://mcss.washu.edu/news/michael-wysession-explores-how-geology-shaped-human-history-new-great-courses-series

Image: Artist's depiction of solar wind striking Earth's magnetosphere (size and distance not to scale) (NASA)

08/12/2026

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is expected to discover more than 100,000 strong gravitational lenses, far more than astronomers have ever studied before.

A new program involving WashU researchers will help astronomers identify and characterize these lenses.

“Roman is going to transform strong gravitational lensing from a field where we study remarkable systems one at a time into one where we can study them as a population,” Tansu Daylan said.

Read more about how WashU researchers are preparing to turn Roman’s unprecedented discoveries into a powerful new scientific resource.

https://mcss.washu.edu/news/building-romans-definitive-strong-lens-catalog

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https://mcss.wustl.edu/

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