Articles

Melissa Lane

Petrology is a field of science in which scientists study the compositions of rocks and minerals and interpret their geologic history. A common graph petrologists use is the “pyroxene quadrilateral.” These graphs, like photos of space, can reveal an understanding of the remotest parts of the solar system.

Geoffrey Reeves

At five years and counting, the Van Allen Probes mission continues to reshape our thinking about how Earth’s radiation belts flex and reconfigure under the influence of solar storms.

Jason Davis

Revisiting images of Earth taken from the uncrewed Apollo 4 command module in 1967.

Sriparna Saha

You might be surprised to learn that studying craters on the Moon can tell us about ancient Earth.

Emily Lakdawalla

The first astrobiology session at last week's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference featured talks on a huge variety of interesting topics, and was one of my favorite sessions at the meeting.

Jason Davis

Only three humans have ever been on a spacewalk in the void between the Earth and Moon.

Heather Hunter

While we can measure properties of these upper layers using ground-based instruments, satellite-borne remote sensing instruments can give us a more frequent, global, and often higher spatial resolution perspective. And that is precisely what NASA’s Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission will deliver.

Jason Davis

What do the shortest days of the year look like from space?

James Davenport

On December 10, Kepler—NASA’s prized exoplanet discovery telescope—will finally turn back and take a picture of the Earth.

Emily Lakdawalla

As expected, OSIRIS-REx's Earth flyby on September 22 was a success. The mission is slowly releasing beautiful images of our home worlds taken by its many cameras following the flyby.

Emily Lakdawalla

OSIRIS-REx launched on September 8, 2016. Now, a year later, it's returning to its home to get a second boost on to its destination, the asteroid Bennu. It'll test all its cameras on Earth and the Moon in the 10 days after the flyby.

Emily Lakdawalla

Today is the 40th anniversary of the launch of Voyager 1. Four decades later, both spacecraft survive, still producing science, still working on their interstellar missions. On the occasion of the anniversary, we revisit Carl Sagan's reflections on the significance of the Voyager missions.

Tanya Harrison

Where did you venture to view the Great American Eclipse? About 100 people were lucky enough to make the trip of a lifetime for it: 38,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, courtesy of Alaska Airlines.

Heather Hunter

The upcoming solar eclipse isn’t just about watching the Moon block out the Sun. A suite of NASA-funded science experiments will to study the unseen effects of the eclipse on Earth's atmosphere.

Shane Pekny

Ravenna, population 1,400, sits on the plains of central Nebraska, and almost on the center line of the path of totality for the upcoming Great American Eclipse. Nebraska native Shane Pekny reports on how this small town is preparing for the big event.

Merc Boyan

With the North American Total Solar Eclipse coming on August 21, people across the continent are getting eclipse mania! Astronomer Tyler Nordgren has written a detailed book on eclipses with a special focus on the August 21st event.

Heidi Stauffer

Stratigraphic columns are a basic tool in geology, used on both Earth and Mars to tell the story of a location. But what are they really?

Heather Hunter

Heather Hunter brings us the next installment in her series on radio detection and ranging.

Elias Nakouzi

If you find a structure that looks like ancient life, can you be really sure that it is ancient life?

Joel Davis

Arabia Terra has always been a bit of a martian enigma. Planetary scientist Joel Davis takes us on a tour of its valley networks and their significance in telling the story of water on Mars.