Rome, Jan 1st - Science arrives full of surprises in 2026, with major advances expected in space, artificial intelligence, medicine, and geology, according to predictions from the magazine Nature.
New missions toward the Moon and Mars, the anticipation for the discovery of Earth-like planets, and the results of trials aiming to identify up to 50 types of cancer through a blood test stand out among the expected advances.
Additionally, there is anticipation for the Chinese project aiming to drill 11 kilometers into the Earth's crust to reach the mantle.
The Artemis II mission is scheduled no earlier than February 2026.
Fifty years after the Apollo missions, it will carry four astronauts for ten days into lunar orbit aboard the Orion spacecraft.
The Moon is also the target of the Chinese Chang'e-7 mission, which plans to reach the lunar south pole in August and land on the surface to search for water ice and study lunar quakes.
Mars' two moons, on the other hand, are Japan's focus, which is preparing to launch the Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission, intended to visit Phobos and Deimos and bring back samples from both satellites to Earth.
In the field of space exploration, there are also high expectations for the European Space Agency's Plato mission.
The new space telescope, whose launch is scheduled for December 2026, should identify Earth-like planets outside the solar system and determine whether they can harbor forms of life.
The coming year also generates high expectations in biomedicine. Of particular interest are the results of a clinical study conducted in Great Britain with 140,000 people, which seeks to identify traces of 50 types of cancer in early stages through a simple blood test, before symptoms appear. If the trial yields positive results, testing could be extended to dozens of hospitals.
Authorization is also expected for two clinical trials based on the CRISPR technique of personalized genetic editing, which in 2025 allowed the correction of a rare metabolic disease in a baby just a few months old.
Additionally, developments are anticipated in the field of artificial intelligence, which is preparing to become a key presence in research laboratories.
The goal is to go beyond large language models (LLMs), which are expensive to train, to develop small-scale models that learn from reduced data sets and specialize in solving very specific problems. These systems do not generate text but process mathematical representations of information.
Finally, there is anticipation for a Chinese mission that, aboard the ship Meng Xiang, plans to drill through the Earth's crust to a depth of 11 kilometers to reach the mantle and extract samples that will help understand how the ocean floor forms and what factors determine tectonic activity.
(Taken from ANSA Latina)
