Music: "Halos" by Lars Leonhard, courtesy of the artist and Ultimae Records. An international team of astronomers exploring the disk of gas and dust the bright star Beta Pictoris have uncovered a compact cloud of poisonous gas formed by...

OSIRIS-REx has imaged Bennu in higher resolution than we have Earth and our own Moon. Since its arrival at the asteroid on Dec. 3, 2018, the spacecraft has discovered boulders the size of buildings, and imaged the surface down to 5...

August 1972, as NASA scientist Ian Richardson remembers it, was hot. In Surrey, England, where he grew up, the fields were brown and dry, and people tried to stay out of the Sun, indoors and televisions on. But for several days that...

The Hubble Space Telescope has been revealing the secrets of the universe for over 30 years, but it turns out Hubble has some secrets of its own! The question is: How far has Hubble seen into the universe? You might be surprised! See if...

A team of astrophysicists has created a simulated image that shows how the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could conduct a mega-exposure similar to but far larger than Hubble’s celebrated Ultra-Deep Field Image. This Hubble observation...

Snakes on a NASA plane! No, not that kind of snake. Donald Blake from the University of California Irvine with the #EarthExpedition ATom mission explains why "snakes" are part of the Whole Air Sampler from behind the scenes on the DC-8...

Five hundred years ago the first “orbit” of planet Earth, achieved in the spirit of the first human voyages to the Moon fifty years ago, was undertaken by the Portuguese explorer Magellan, using mission design and exploration guiding...

How can you see the atmosphere? By tracking what is carried on the wind. Tiny aerosol particles such as smoke, dust, and sea salt are transported across the globe, making visible weather patterns and other normally invisible physical...

A conversation with Darlene Lim, Principal Investigator on NASA’s Biologic Analog Science Associated with Lave Terrains (BASALT) project.

In some ways, spaceflight changes you forever,” says Ken Bowersox. Since he was 7 years old, Ken knew he wanted to become an astronaut. In his astronaut career, he participated in many exciting missions, including an extended stay on the...

Astronomer and historian Steven Dick tells us there are many approaches to consider and many questions we should ask ourselves to get ready, in case extraterrestrial life is found.

Joel Montalbano, the International Space Station program manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, commemorates 20 years of continuous human presence on the orbiting laboratory, highlighting the program’s milestones, its assembly, and the...

Why can you see the Moon during the day? Easy, because it’s there! It may seem odd to look up at the daytime sky and see the Moon but it’s perfectly natural. Planetary geologist Sarah Noble breaks it down so you know when to look up....

Venus, our nearby “sister” planet, beckons today as a compelling target for exploration that may connect the objects in our own solar system to those discovered around nearby stars. Yet, humanity’s exploration of Venus has been hampered...

Snacktime with NASA digs into the science behind what’s on your plate from a tasty cheese board, to seafood, to fresh produce, to chips and dip. Food can bring us a sense of home, and it connects people all around the world. With...

The OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter (OLA) will provide a three-dimensional map of asteroid Bennu’s shape, which will allow scientists to understand the context of the asteroid’s geography and the sample location. OLA is provided by the...

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will find undiscovered worlds around bright nearby stars, providing targets where future studies will assess their capacity to harbor life. TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission,...

In order to know how the universe will end, we must know what has happened to it so far. This is just one mystery NASA's forthcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope mission will tackle as it explores the distant cosmos. The...

Researchers working with data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have discovered the mission’s first circumbinary planet, a world orbiting two stars. The planet, called TOI 1338b, is around 6.9 times larger than...

Nearly 10 billion years ago, the black hole at the center of a distant galaxy produced a powerful outburst, and light from this blast began arriving at Earth in 2012. Astronomers using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and...

Scheduled to launch in the mid-2020s, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, formerly known as WFIRST, will function as Hubble’s wide-eyed cousin. While just as sensitive as Hubble's cameras, the Roman Space Telescope's 300-megapixel...

2016 was a big year for NASA’s field campaigns studying our changing planet, and 2017 will be just as exciting. New Earth science missions include HyspIRI, which will collect data on coral reef health and volcanic gas emissions; PACE,...

The topic of climate change inspires a lot of debate. At NASA, it has also inspired a lot of science. NASA scientists examine the Earth's climate and how it is changing -- gaining knowledge through decades of satellite observations,...

Water specialists Rick Allen, Bill Kramber and Tony Morse have created an innovative satellite-based method that maps agricultural water consumption. The team uses Landsat thermal band data to measure the amount of water evaporating from...