Stories by John Matson

A new study shows promise for Earthbound observatories in identifying molecules in planetary atmospheres outside the solar system

The president wants to scrap NASA's space shuttle successor, now in development, and relax the agency's focus on returning to the moon

Moving from computer simulations to real bots, university teams will try to design a robotic protocol that loads pallets like a pro

Ganymede and Callisto, the two largest Jovian satellites, appear to have similar origins but have led very different lives

Now designated a stationary science platform, Spirit's next order of business is bracing for a long, harsh winter

Twisting plasma flows beneath the sun's surface provide a way to predict potentially dangerous solar outbursts

The Red Bull Stratos mission endeavors to shatter many long-held records in parachuting and balloon aviation

Earth's gravitational pull shakes up weathered surfaces on asteroids that venture into the planet's surprisingly large sphere of influence

A new model for the inner workings of the Saturnian moon proposes that it only acts out every billion years or so, and we just happen to be around to see it

A timely Q&A with physicist Sean Carroll about how our one-way trip from past to future is entangled with entropy and the origin of the universe

Some proposed exoplanets have proved to be more massive objects such as brown dwarfs or stars, and some may prove not to exist at all

NASA hopes that Kepler will eventually turn up habitable, Earth-like worlds

Chemists catch nanometer-scale structures self-assembling around transient templates

Plotting the roots of run-of-the-mill polynomials yields dazzling results

On the frontier of planetary exploration, nothing is easy

Detectors buried deep within a mine registered two potential signals of dark matter, but either or both could have been background noise

A trio of studies presents evidence for the more elusive small planets orbiting nearby stars