All Stories

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. 

The upcoming Kenneth C. Griffin Exploring the Planets Gallery at the National Air and Space Museum will give visitors a new perspective on the many worlds within our solar system.

For the first Earth Day in 1970, cartoonist Walt Kelly trenchantly captured the core tension of humanity’s relationship to its home world as expressed through environmentalism and climate change: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Ingenuity, the small, four-pound autonomous aircraft, will attempt the biggest of feats. The Wright brothers lifted their 1903 Flyer off the ground over a century ago and now the Mars Helicopter will attempt the same. Ginny is set to take off from the surface of the Red Planet no earlier than April 14.

Have you ever wondered how the stuff in space gets named? These days, there’s one organization that approves and keeps track of ALL of the official names from stars and asteroids to mountains on Mars and geysers on Enceladus. We break down the naming process and some of our favorites on today’s episode!

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.

I’m an executive producer at Smithsonian Channel and I had the pleasure of making the documentary Making Tracks on Mars. We made our film feel like an adventure because most people think of Mars as a frontier, but at its core, the story taps into our primal drive to explore.

It’s been nearly 60 years since the first spacecraft were sent to Mars, and it’s inspiring to reflect on the progress that has been made since then. If all goes according to plan, the landing of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover will mark the start of NASA’s ninth surface mission on the Red Planet.

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.

In 1897 author H.G. Wells imagined a different way to see Mars in his short shorty, “The Crystal Egg." Writing around the same time as his famous novel, “War of the Worlds,” he introduces us to two humans who discover a mysterious egg-shaped crystal that allows them to view the surface of Mars – and the strange creatures that inhabit it.