Jun 24 Will launching plants into orbit yield new medicines? By Eric Boodman, STAT A team of biologists and chemists hopes that this alien environment might prod these floral cosmonauts into producing new and improved molecules for drugs. Continue reading
Jun 21 Why a U.S. ‘Space Force’ is ‘premature’ but ‘inevitable’ By Nsikan Akpan What would a space force look like? Why now? Will NASA play a role? Three experts, including a retired Air Force Lieutenant General, explain the rationale behind President Trump's announcement. Continue reading
Jun 20 The science behind the summer solstice By Stephen Schneider, The Conversation The summer solstice brings the longest day and shortest night of the year for 88 percent of Earth’s people. Continue reading
Jun 13 NASA Rover knocked out as giant dust storm engulfs Mars By Amel Ahmed, KQED Flight controllers tried late Tuesday night to contact Opportunity, but the rover did not respond. The storm has been growing since the end of May and now covers one-quarter of the planet. Continue reading
May 14 What Kilauea’s eruption can reveal about volcanoes on other worlds—and possibly, alien life By Fedor Kossakovski The Kilauea volcano provides a natural laboratory on Earth to study volcanoes found on other planets and moons in our solar system. Continue reading
May 10 WATCH LIVE: SpaceX to launch Bangabandhu-1 satellite atop Block 5, the most powerful Falcon 9 rocket to date By Nsikan Akpan On Friday, SpaceX is slated to launch Bangabandhu Satellite-1, Bangladesh’s first communications satellite. But Block 5 -- the souped-up SpaceX rocket carrying the satellite -- may be the real headliner. Continue reading
May 04 WATCH: NASA launches InSight, the first lander for peering deep into Mars By Rashmi Shivni InSight could become the first probe to dig deep into Mars' interior to explore how the Red Planet’s geology evolved over billions of years, including the planet’s so-called “marsquakes.”… Continue reading
May 03 Read Stephen Hawking’s final theory on the Big Bang By Nsikan Akpan Stephen Hawking's final theory challenges the existence of the multiverse and argues the Big Bang had a finite boundary, defined by string theory and holograms. Continue reading
Apr 26 This stunning map of the Milky Way pinpoints more than 1 billion stars By Lee Billings, Scientific American The European Space Agency’s Gaia mission has released a catalog, the most detailed to date, of more than 1.5 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Continue reading
Apr 16 WATCH LIVE: TESS, NASA’s new exoplanet hunter, launches on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket By Jason Steffen, The Conversation NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will monitor more than 200,000 stars to discover thousands of exoplanets, ranging from Earth-sized to gas giants. Continue reading