What a week. Beloved nature communicator David Attenborough turned 100 on Friday, and scientists named a newly discovered species of wasp in his honor. The wasp from Chile, called Attenboroughnculus tau, isn’t the first to be named after Attenborough — it joins a list of over 50 organisms bearing his name in some way, which seems about right. Also this week, NASA shared an update about its Curiosity rover, which encountered some issues during a sampling attempt on Mars, and the agency released a new batch of photos from the Artemis II mission.
Read on on to learn more about those and other science stories we found interesting this week.
Curiosity runs into a bit of trouble
NASA’s Curiosity rover found itself in a bit of a pickle recently after drilling into some Martian rock that proved unexpectedly clingy. In an incident that was captured by Curiosity’s cameras on April 29, the rover can be seen with a slab of rock stuck on its drill bit after it attempted to collect a sample. The rock, dubbed Atacama, was about 1.5 feet wide and weighed nearly 30 pounds, according to NASA. Somehow in the 14 years the rover has been exploring Mars, this has never happened before, and vibrating the drill to shake the rock free didn’t work at first.
“When the rover retracted its arm, the entire rock lifted out of the ground, suspended by the fixed sleeve that surrounds the rotating drill bit,” NASA explains in a blog post. “Drilling has fractured or separated the upper layers of rocks in the past, but a rock has never remained attached to the drill sleeve.” After a few more attempts over the next couple of days, the team was able to get the rock loose by “tilting the drill more, rotating and vibrating the drill, and spinning the drill bit.” We can see the rock finally dropping away from Curiosity and breaking apart in images taken on May 1.
Curiosity has taken dozens of samples from the surface of Mars by drilling into rock, as shown in this image from 2024 (trypophobia warning). After drilling, the rover collects the powderized rock and analyzes it with its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) and Chemistry & Mineralogy (CheMin) instruments to determine the composition. Now that its brief mishap has been resolved, it can get back to work.
What goes on at the bottom of an Arctic fjord
The Arctic seafloor isn’t exactly an easy place to observe, but thanks to a long-running research program at Inglefield Bredning in northwest Greenland, we’ve got a glimpse of what life is like there deep beneath the surface. As part of this effort, researchers deployed a video camera and hydrophone 260 meters deep in the fjord for a week in August 2025 to assess the seafloor environment and biodiversity. Their findings were just published in the journal PLOS One, along with some incredible photos and videos (don’t be alarmed by the eerie hue, that’s due to the red light they used underwater).
The team recorded a total of 478 different organisms, including comb jellies, arrowworms, snailfish and shrimp. In one clip, a snailfish can be seen passively riding the current to drift backward, which the researchers note was “peculiar.” Check out the highlights here.
The instruments also picked up the sounds of nearby narwhals, which were present on every day of the study except one, as well as the sounds of cracking and melting icebergs and boat engine noises. The footage also shows tons of what’s known as “marine snow,” or organic debris like poop and material from dead animals and plants. It’s kind of gross to think about, but many deep-sea creatures rely on this material that falls from higher waters.
Based on the success of their observations, the researchers say their approach could be a feasible way to study these deep Arctic ecosystems. “So far, there have been few direct underwater observations in the Arctic for ecological research,” the authors wrote. “With video setups becoming accessible, more studies would be beneficial for filling this knowledge gap.” Compact, portable moorings with video recorders could be “an important tool for exploration of the Arctic seafloor,” they note.
Feast your eyes on 12,000+ photos from Artemis II
NASA
NASA this week released thousands of pictures captured during last month’s Artemis II mission around the moon. You can find them all here. In classic government website fashion, the UI kind of sucks, but it’s well worth it to click through the catalog if you’ve got some time on your hands. While their target was the moon, and there are lots of great shots of the moon both from up close and afar, there are some really striking images of Earth and the Milky Way in there too.
