This year’s Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded to the team behind NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP, a space telescope that launched in 2001 to map the cosmic microwave background—the earliest, oldest light we can detect from the universe’s infancy...
The Executive Secretary of the National Space Council discusses the Trump administration’s plans to “make America great again”—in space
As it departs the inner solar system, scientists are racing to study the object before it fades from view
A conversation with scientist and author Caleb Scharf about the relative scales of the universe, the limits of knowledge and finding significance in life
Astrophysicists searching for gravitational waves have finally learned what happens when you crash two neutron stars together--and it's very, very shiny.
Spacetime ripples from a stellar cataclysm in a distant galaxy help explain the cosmic origins of gold, and chart the course for a new age of “multi-messenger” astronomy
Half of our home galaxy is terra incognita. That will soon change
Seeing a chance to lead, China is deploying clean energy, quantum satellites and genomics
Any astronomy buff will tell you about the first time they looked through a telescope. What many of them won’t say, though, is how disappointing those first looks can be.
Fully opening this new window on the universe will take decades—even centuries
A new study hints that the most energetic particles ever seen come from far beyond the Milky Way.
The Cassini orbiter will burn out, but its legacy won’t fade away
Isolated in a giant thermal vacuum chamber, NASA’s $8.6 billion next-generation observatory is riding out the worst of Hurricane Harvey
A new documentary marks the 40th anniversary of humanity’s most audacious interplanetary spacecraft
Is our nearest neighboring exoplanet, Proxima b, an "Earth next door," or is it a lifeless rock?
America is preparing for a sea-to-shining-sea solar eclipse. Here’s how you can watch the spectacular display, and maybe even snap a photo to commemorate the event, without burning your retinas or damaging your camera’s optics...
Despite technical glitches and regulatory hurdles, nanosatellite swarms could someday be the cornerstone for revolutionary interplanetary or even interstellar space-science missions
New results suggest free-floating giant planets are less common than previously believed, but hint at vast numbers of smaller castaway worlds
Scientists and the public are dazzled by images from the spacecraft’s close encounter with Jupiter’s largest—and the solar system’s most famous—storm
The discovery could offer fresh insight into how fundamental forces bind together subatomic particles
Already a subscriber? Sign in.
