How to Go to Mars

Staff writers George Musser and Mark Alpert make sense of the myriad ideas for a human mission

A Bus Between the Planets

Gravity-assist trajectories between Earth and Mars would reduce the cost of shuttling human crews and their equipment

Why Go to Mars?

In the first of this group of articles about human missions to Mars, staff writer Glenn Zorpette examines the main goal: looking for life

To Mars by Way of Its Moons

Phobos and Deimos would make ideal staging areas

Software Agents

The Mars Direct Plan

A leading advocate of manned missions to Mars, Robert Zubrin, outlines his relatively inexpensive plan to send astronauts to the Red Planet within a decade

Staying Sane in Space

"Is the right stuff enough?" asks staff writer Sarah Simpson

Invaders From Hollywood

Thanks to Pathfinder and other missions, science gets some respect in Tinseltown, as staff writer Philip Yam finds after touchdown on a Vancouver set

The Tick-Tock of the Biological Clock

Biological clocks count off 24-hour intervals in most forms of life. Genetics has revealed that related molecular timepieces are at work in fruit flies, mice and humans

Dissecting a Hurricane

Flying into the raging tumult of Dennis, scientists suspected that the storm might transform into a monster–if they were lucky

The Bromeliads of the Atlantic Forest

Along the coast of Brazil, 8 percent of a once flourishing forest is left to house a diverse family of bromeliads. A group of biologists scale cliffs and trees to collect these rare beauties...