Marina Koren
When a Mars Simulation Goes Wrong
A recent mission atop a Hawaiian volcano shows humans still have much to learn before they set foot on another world.
-
![]()
Pavel Golovkin / AP / Thanh Do / ... Trump’s NASA Administrator: ‘No Reason’ to Dismiss U.N. Climate Report
In a wide-ranging interview, Jim Bridenstine explains his plans for NASA, the nerve-racking Soyuz launch failure, and his views on climate change.
-
![]()
Chris Carlson / AP The Problem with Popular Mechanics’ Love Letter to Elon Musk
The magazine’s editor acknowledged the cover story is a “puff piece,” but stood by his decision to defend the billionaire in dramatic fashion.
-
![]()
Art Wolfe / Getty Jupiter’s Frozen Moon Is Studded With 50-Foot Blades of Ice
Scientists envision the dramatic surface of Europa, one of the best candidates for alien life in the solar system.
-
![]()
Marshall Space Flight Center / NASA Hubble’s Hardware Woes and the Painful Era of Aging Spacecraft
Four of NASA’s most recognizable missions are in “safe mode” or unable to communicate with Earth.
-
![]()
NASA / Getty The Absurdity of the First Man Flag Controversy
The film is a 141-minute commercial for a uniquely American brand of determination and achievement.
-
![]()
Dmitri Lovetsky / AP A Failed Launch May Ground the World’s Astronauts for the Foreseeable Future
The harrowing emergency landing in Kazakhstan is a grim sign for crewed missions to the International Space Station.
-
![]()
OzGrav / Swinburne University of Technology A Spree of Signals From Across the Universe
Scientists still don’t understand “fast radio bursts,” but they’ve gotten a lot better at discovering them.
-
![]()
Mike Groll / AP A Celestial Event Left Bees Speechless
Recordings from tiny microphones showed that the insects stopped buzzing during the 2017 eclipse.
-
![]()
Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP Elon Musk Isn’t Done Tweeting Yet
The Tesla CEO mocked the SEC in a tweet just days after settling a lawsuit with the agency over a different tweet.
-
![]()
Dan Durda A Stunning Discovery in the Search for Moons Beyond the Solar System
Astronomers have detected what may be the first “exomoon.”
-
![]()
Peter Power / Reuters One Wikipedia Page Is a Metaphor for the Nobel Prize’s Record With Women
Donna Strickland is only the third woman in history to win the award in physics—and her research probably deserved attention a lot sooner.
-
![]()
Roberto Molar Candanosa / Scott Sheppard / Carnegie ... The Growing Case for an Elusive Ninth Planet
Astronomers have found another quirky object that suggests a giant body lurks at the fringes of the solar system.
-
![]()
Goddard Space Flight Center / NASA A New Clue in the Search for Forests on Distant Planets
To find signs of plant life on other worlds, it helps to understand the history of our own.
-
![]()
NASA The Moon Is Open for Business
Commercial companies are proposing lunar missions at a pace the world hasn’t seen since the Apollo program.
-
![]()
JAXA The Best-Ever Photos of an Asteroid’s Rugged Terrain
A Japanese mission has captured mesmerizing views of a distant space rock.
-
![]()
ESA The Milky Way Is Still Feeling the Effects of an Ancient Encounter
A close flyby with a small galaxy hundreds of millions of years ago sent ripples through our own that astronomers can still observe today.
-
![]()
JPL / NASA SpaceX’s Moon Trip Is the Ultimate Artist Residency
The proposed lunar voyage is the latest in a long tradition of dispatching creative thinkers to extreme environments.
-
![]()
JPL / NASA NASA’s Beloved Mars Rovers Are Having a Rough Year
One was felled by a dust storm. And now the other has been sidelined by a technical glitch.
-
![]()
Mike Segar / Reuters What Is 13,000 Feet Tall, Millions of Years Old, and Spews Out Ice?
Scientists are searching for a mysterious kind of volcano on the dwarf planet Ceres.
-
![]()
Chris Carlson / AP SpaceX Will Send a Japanese Billionaire to the Moon—And He’s Taking a Bunch of Artists With Him
The spaceflight company said Monday it would take Yusaku Maezawa on a historic trip in 2023.
