Stories by Lee Billings

New studies suggest the dwarf planet’s spin is tilted askew, perhaps by the presence of a subsurface sea

European Space Agency’s Schiaparelli spacecraft crashed and possibly exploded

The Schiaparelli lander’s failure to phone home has scientists fearing the worst

With the Schiaparelli lander, Europe hopes to join the U.S. and Russia in successfully touching down on the Red Planet

A privately funded small space telescope could soon seek Earth-like planets around the sun’s nearest neighboring stars

If there is life on the Red Planet—even just alien microbes clinging to existence in isolated refuges—any biological contamination we import from Earth could cause an ecological and scientific catastrophe

David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz share the 2016 Nobel Prize for work explaining the topological underpinnings of superconductivity and other strange phenomena

Recent disappointments have physicists looking beyond WIMPs for dark matter particles

Follow the pioneering spacecraft’s final descent to the bizarre surface of the distant space traveler  

Astronomers are racing to get the first historic image of another possibly Earth-like planet. Here’s how they’ll do it

A protein from microscopic creatures called tardigrades keeps their DNA protected—and could someday shield humans from radiation.

If confirmed, the icy Jovian moon’s eruptions could offer new pathways for exploring its subsurface ocean

A science fiction novel published in 2013 pegged some of the most salient details for our nearest neighboring exoplanet

Cracks are showing in the dominant explanation for dark matter. Is there anything more plausible to replace it?

A blip of energy picked up by a Russian radio telescope might have been nothing more than a satellite passing overhead—or even a software glitch

Astronomers find an exoplanet that could be habitable—and it’s as close to us as it could possibly be

NASA’s first sample-return mission to an asteroid could be vital for understanding life’s origins and shaping its future

A thermal spike linked to the solar system’s largest storm explains weather on gas-giant planets

A new film presents an innovative plan to image potentially habitable planets around our sun's closest stellar neighbor—Alpha Centauri 

A new theory suggests the Red Planet once had a spectacular lunar system. Lee Billings reports.

A next-generation space telescope is in the works—but if it is to see potentially habitable planets, it will need to block out their suns

The Milky Way’s home supercluster of galaxies is far bigger than previously known

New results from Dawn spacecraft fuel debate on whether the dwarf planet is a habitable oasis between Mars and Jupiter

More than a third of humanity cannot see the Milky Way due to light pollution, and a new wave of energy-efficient lighting could make the problem much worse