Eric Niiler is a freelance science writer based in Bethesda, Md. He is a former staff writer at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and has written for Wired, National Geographic and many other publications.
After brutal cuts, can this NASA center still build multibillion-dollar space telescopes?
2025 was a brutal year of budget cuts and workforce attrition at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the home base for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Experts worry Goddard—and NASA’s space science—may never recover
Into the Jaguar's Den
Hunting as a Means to Preserve the Jungle's Foremost Competitor
The Trouble with Turtles
Despite heroic efforts to protect the nesting beaches of green turtles, fewer and fewer of these endangered creatures reappear every year.Researchers have been stunned to discover that shielding young turtles is only half the battle
Bad Breathosaur
Awash in Oil
There's plenty of cheap oil, says the U.S. Geological Survey
Island Survivors
On what once was a North American Gal¿pagos, researchers try to save devastated wildlife
Diseased Passage
Crossing the sewage-filled New River, migrants risk their health--and others'
A New Rex
The biggest meat eater of them all bolsters the theory of pack hunting