Lee Billings is a science journalist specializing in astronomy, physics, planetary science, and spaceflight and is senior desk editor for physical science at Scientific American. He is author of a critically acclaimed book, Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars, which in 2014 won a Science Communication Award from the American Institute of Physics. In addition to his work for Scientific American, Billings’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, Wired, New Scientist, Popular Science and many other publications. Billings joined Scientific American in 2014 and previously worked as a staff editor at SEED magazine. He holds a B.A. in journalism from the University of Minnesota.
Against April Fools' in Science Journalism
My lowest point as a science journalist came before I even knew what a science journalist was. I was a young punk in an eighth-grade science class at Northwood Middle School in Greenville, South Carolina
NASA Chooses a Boulder as the Next Destination for Its Astronauts
The agency's controversial Asteroid Redirect Mission no longer calls for redirecting an asteroid into high lunar orbit
After a Martian Marathon, NASA's Opportunity Rover Faces Uncertain Future
It's been a long time coming, but this week NASA's Mars Opportunity rover completed the first-ever Martian marathon. After landing on the Red Planet in January 2004 on a mission originally planned to only last 90 days, Opportunity has instead endured for more than a decade, and has taken eleven years and two months to [...]
Fact or Fiction?: Dark Matter Killed the Dinosaurs
A new out-of-this-world theory links mass extinctions with exotic astrophysics and galactic architecture
That's What Ya Call a 4-Star Planet
Astronomers report the discovery of only the second quadruple-star system known to host at least one planet. But they suspect there are a lot more such systems out there. Lee Billings reports
Looking for Life In Our Soggy Solar System
Scientists are finding liquid water, the cornerstone for life as we know it, in surprising nooks and crannies of the solar system. Following Wednesday's news that there seem to be hydrothermal vents churning away in the warm, alkaline seas inside Saturn's moon Enceladus, researchers announced airtight evidence yesterday that Jupiter's moon Ganymede also has a [...]
First Active Hydrothermal System Found beyond Earth
Saturn's icy moon Enceladus has a surprisingly warm inner world
Dawn Spacecraft Arrives at Ceres, Becomes First to Orbit a Dwarf Planet
Shortly after 7:30 am Eastern time this morning, a seven-year space voyage at last reached its final destination: NASA's Dawn mission entered orbit around Ceres, a small, icy world orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter.
Dawn Spacecraft Sees Spots as It Approaches Mysterious Ceres
Spectacular new images are trickling in from NASA’s mission to a dwarf planet in the Asteroid Belt
The Shifting Politics of NASA's Astronaut Program
Ever since President George W. Bush's decision to retire the space shuttles in the aftermath 2003's Columbia disaster, NASA's human spaceflight program has been adrift.
Bacteria Got an Early Fix on Nitrogen
New evidence points to the evolution of the ability for bacteria to grab nitrogen from the atmosphere some 3.2 billion years ago, about 1.2 billion years earlier than thought—with implications for finding extraterrestrial life. Lee Billings reports
The Universe's Oldest Stars Were Late Bloomers
The Planck satellite reveals the universe's first stars formed more than a hundred million years later than previously believed
Space Science Budget Gets Small Lift
NASA has to deal with the unexpected financial consequences of robotic missions that just keep going. Lee Billings reports
NASA’s Next Space Telescope Promises the Stars—and Planets, Too
The much-hyped James Webb Space Telescope promises to revolutionize exoplanet science, but only if astronomers can agree on how to use it.
Planet Hunters Bet Big on a Small Telescope to See Alien Earths
In 1990, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft briefly looked back from its journey out of the solar system, capturing a view of the faraway Earth. Carl Sagan called it the "pale blue dot." From more than 6 billion kilometers away, beyond the orbit of Pluto, it seemed remarkable that our planet was even visible.
Long-Lost Lander Found on Mars
New images from a NASA orbiter reveal Beagle 2’s final resting place. Lee Billings reports
Newfound Exoplanets Are Most Earth-Like Yet
NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft finds two worlds that have sizes and orbits similar to ours
NASA’s Asteroid Retrieval Mission Faces Criticism
The agency’s proposed human trip to a space rock has a bumpy road ahead
SpaceX Will Try Launch, Then Soft-Land Returning Booster
The company hopes to send up a Falcon 9 rocket and then safely land the discarded first stage for reuse. Lee Billings reports
The Top Ten Space and Physics Stories of 2014
From humanity’s first, flawed foray to the surface of a comet to the celebrated discovery of (and less celebrated skepticism about) primordial gravitational waves, 2014 has brought some historic successes and failures in space science and physics.
NASA Rover Finds Mysterious Methane Emissions on Mars
New results suggest evidence for extraterrestrial life could be near at hand
Fact or Fiction?: The Explosive Death of Eta Carinae Will Cause a Mass Extinction
We almost certainly have nothing to fear from one of the largest and brightest stars in the sky
Rosetta Pours Cold Water on the Cometary Origins of Earth's Oceans
In the Enuma Elish, a Babylonian epic that recounts the creation of the world, the heavens and the Earth emerge from a primordial abyss of brackish water
2 Futures Can Explain Time's Mysterious Past
New theories suggest the big bang was not the beginning, and that we may live in the past of a parallel universe