Mars, a barren and radioactive desert, has long been a focus of science fiction as humanity’s potential future home. While the technology to terraform Mars doesn’t currently exist, a recent study from Northwestern University suggests that warming the planet to make it more habitable might be simpler than previously believed. The key could lie in using materials already present on Mars.

The first step in terraforming Mars is raising its temperature to sustain liquid water instead of the scattered ice currently found on the surface. Although Martian temperatures can occasionally reach up to 70 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius), the average surface temperature hovers around -85 degrees Fahrenheit (-65 degrees Celsius). The study found that injecting specific particulates into Mars’ thin atmosphere could significantly warm the planet.

Scientists have made a significant breakthrough in understanding where water on the Moon may be hiding. A recent analysis of Moon dust collected by China’s Chang’e-5 lander has revealed that a mineral within the dust contains an astonishing amount of water—so much so that water constitutes 41 percent of its weight. This mineral is similar to novograblenovite, a rare substance first identified in basaltic rock from Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula only a few years ago. Both the lunar and terrestrial minerals share the chemical formula (NH4)MgCl3·6H2O and have comparable crystalline structures.

The discovery of this water-rich mineral on the Moon is not only intriguing for what it tells us about lunar water but also for the clues it may provide about the Moon’s geological history and the origins of its water. The fact that we can study a similar mineral on Earth allows scientists to draw parallels and hypothesize about how water became trapped in the Moon’s surface materials.

In the future, space exploration may rely not on individual, expensive satellites, but on teams of smaller satellites working together as a “swarm.” These swarms will enhance accuracy, agility, and autonomy in space missions. Researchers at Stanford University’s Space Rendezvous Lab are at the forefront of this innovation, recently completing the first-ever in-orbit test of a prototype system that navigates a swarm of satellites using only visual information shared through a wireless network.

“It’s a milestone paper and the culmination of 11 years of effort by my lab, which was founded with this goal of surpassing the current state of the art and practice in distributed autonomy in space,” said Simone D’Amico, associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics and senior author of the study published on the arXiv preprint server. “Starling is the first demonstration ever made of an autonomous swarm of satellites.”