Stories by Lee Billings

Air Force Tracks Final Frontier

General Jay Raymond, Commander of Air Force Space Command, talks about keeping watch over space and cyber.  

Where Will NASA Go Next? Saturn's Moon Titan, or Maybe a Comet

A flying drone to sniff out life on Titan and a spacecraft to return comet samples to Earth are finalists in NASA’s search for its next interplanetary destination

A Map of Future Exoplanetary Discovery

Most of the alien worlds closest to our own are found around the smallest, dimmest nearby stars

Alien Probe or Galactic Driftwood? SETI Tunes In to 'Oumuamua

It’s a long shot, but scientists are about to listen very closely for radio signals from our solar system’s first known interstellar visitor

What Will NASA’s Biggest-Ever Space Telescope Study First?

To fully utilize the long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope, researchers will have to squeeze a generation of scientific studies into the multibillion-dollar observatory’s short lifetime...

Inflating the Universe with Prize-Winning Cosmologist David Spergel

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...

Q&A: Plotting U.S. Space Policy with White House Adviser Scott Pace

The Executive Secretary of the National Space Council discusses the Trump administration’s plans to “make America great again”—in space

Astronomers Spot First-Ever Space Rock from Another Star

As it departs the inner solar system, scientists are racing to study the object before it fades from view

Astrophysicist Leads a Tour of the "Zoomable Universe"

A conversation with scientist and author Caleb Scharf about the relative scales of the universe, the limits of knowledge and finding significance in life

Neutron Star Collisions Create Gold

Astrophysicists searching for gravitational waves have finally learned what happens when you crash two neutron stars together--and it's very, very shiny.

Gravitational Wave Astronomers Hit Mother Lode

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

Astronomers Are Finally Mapping the “Dark Side” of the Milky Way

Half of our home galaxy is terra incognita. That will soon change

China’s Huge Investments in Science Are Starting to Pay Off

Seeing a chance to lead, China is deploying clean energy, quantum satellites and genomics

New Telescope "Gives Back the Sky" to City-Dwellers

The Future of Gravitational Wave Astronomy

Fully opening this new window on the universe will take decades—even centuries

Galaxies Far, Far Away Send Us Highest-Energy Cosmic Rays

A new study hints that the most energetic particles ever seen come from far beyond the Milky Way.  

Cassini’s “Grand Finale” Will Be a Blaze of Glory

The Cassini orbiter will burn out, but its legacy won’t fade away

James Webb Space Telescope Surrounded by Rising Floodwaters

Isolated in a giant thermal vacuum chamber, NASA’s $8.6 billion next-generation observatory is riding out the worst of Hurricane Harvey

“The Farthest” Brings NASA’s Voyager Missions Back to Earth

A new documentary marks the 40th anniversary of humanity’s most audacious interplanetary spacecraft

The Air out There: Astronomers Aim to Find Atmospheres of Alien Earths

Is our nearest neighboring exoplanet, Proxima b, an "Earth next door," or is it a lifeless rock?