Quiet supersonic jets may one day fly over land to offer faster commercial and passenger flights. Before that can happen, however, the FAA will need to establish new rules regarding these typically noisy flights. To help usher in that era, NASA plans to test Lockheed Martin’s X-59 QueSST, an experimental supersonic jet that produces a ‘thump’ instead of a ‘boom,’ something the space agency will verify using a microphone array that is 30 miles long.

Last December, scientists discovered an “active” asteroid within the asteroid belt, sandwiched between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The space rock, designated by astronomers as 6478 Gault, appeared to be leaving two trails of dust in its wake—active behavior that is associated with comets but rarely seen in asteroids.

While astronomers are still puzzling over the cause of Gault’s comet-like activity, an MIT-led team now reports that it has caught the asteroid in the act of changing color, in the near-infrared spectrum, from red to blue. It is the first time scientists have observed a color-shifting asteroid, in real-time.

“That was a very big surprise,” says Michael Marsset, a postdoc in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “We think we have witnessed the asteroid losing its reddish dust to space, and we are seeing the asteroid’s underlying, fresh blue layers.”

An asteroid larger than some of the world’s tallest buildings will zip by Earth next month.

Terraforming would be a monumental task. How about this instead?

Humanity could make patches of the Red Planet habitable relatively cheaply and efficiently by placing thin layers of silica aerogel on or above the Martian surface, a new study suggests. The insulating aerogel would warm the ground enough to melt water ice and would also block harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation, potentially creating an environment where plants and other photosynthetic life could flourish.