All Stories

Astronomers are deciphering the violent history of the Milky Way, one star at a time.

Crop-dusting was an often hazardous occupation, until a maverick entrepreneur and pilot designed the right airplanes for the job. 

The Apollo missions contributed more than putting humans on the Moon, it also produced a lot of new scientific data and discoveries which expanded our knowledge of both the Moon itself and our Solar System. Here are ten of our top Apollo discoveries.

During the Apollo missions, astronauts didn't just travel to the Moon—they conducted experiments, both on the surface of the Moon and while in orbit.

Mercury is a one-plate planet, and as the smallest of the terrestrial planets of our solar system, it has a lot to teach us about how small rocky planets evolve. Read about a perspective of Mercury has that been determined from images and data returned by spacecrafts Mariner 10 and MESSENGER.

Every rock can tell us a story, once we know how to read it. The sample designated 15016 tells a story of how two visitors from another world happened to collect it.

Earth’s twin or Earth’s evil twin? It depends on who you ask. And no, we’re NOT talking about Mars (take a break from the news cycle, Ingenuity). We’re talking about the beautiful, enigmatic, and hot (VERY hot) VENUS. Not one but TWO NASA spacecraft are heading to Venus later this decade. 

Today we’re tackling something we’ve wanted to talk about for a long time (which is relative, because time and space lose all meaning there). They’re incredibly dense, super cool, and mind-bendingly-mysterious -- BLACK HOLES! But how do you imagine – let alone study—the unseeable? And seriously—what happened at the end of “Interstellar?”

It seems like every time there’s big news from outer space, it’s that we found water some place—as traces of ice or wisps of vapor, embedded in rocks or bound up in dry-as-dirt-regolith. Today, Matt, Nick, and Emily explore how we search for wet spots in the solar system, what they can tell us about our home planet, and why they’re the key to making our way in the universe.

To get the answer, we have to know what to look for and where to go on the planet for evidence of past life. With the Perseverance rover set to land on Mars on February 18, we are finally in a position to know.