Three NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut will spend about six months on the International Space Station - conducting experiments and research. They'll relieve four people of the Crew-7 mission.
It's a question that's been posed again and again. Carl Sagan posed it in the 1970s as a NASA mission scientist as the agency prepared to send its twin Viking landers to Mars.
And nearly 50 years after the first of two landers touched down on Mars, we're no closer to an answer as to whether there's life — out there.
Scientists haven't stopped looking. In fact, they've expanded their gaze to places like Saturn's largest moon, Titan and Jupiter's moon Europa.
The search for life beyond planet earth continues to captivate. And NASA has upcoming missions to both moons. Could we be closer to answering that question Carl Sagan asked some 50 years ago?
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The sci-fi film Dune: Part Two is out in theaters now. The movie takes place on the harsh desert planet, Arrakis, where water is scarce and giant, killer sandworms lurk just beneath the surface. But what do planetary scientists and biologists think about the science of these worms, Arrakis and our other favorite sci-fi planets?
Today on the show, Regina G. Barber talks to biologist (and Star Trek consultant!) Mohamed Noor and planetary scientist Michael Wong about Dune, habitable planets and how to make fantasy seem more realistic.
Want more of the science behind your favorite fictional worlds? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.
Navy Capt. Victor Glover, who spent nearly six months aboard the International Space Station, will be among four astronauts to venture back to the moon for the first time since 1972.
Intuitive Machines, the company that built and flew the spacecraft, said it will continue to collect data until sunlight no longer shines on the solar panels, expected to happen Tuesday morning.
Odysseus — the first U.S. lander in over 50 years — tipped over at touchdown and ended up on its side near the moon's south pole, hampering communications, Intuitive Machines officials said Friday.
An Austin, Texas-to-Detroit flight along April's path of totality is sold out. There are other flights with a view, though your best bet may actually be here on Earth, says one astrophysicist.
NASA is crashing the ISS into the ocean at the end of 2030. The agency is collaborating with private companies to build its replacement. So what could the space stations of the near future look like?
The one-in-a-billion chance it could have hit somebody on the head didn't become a reality, as the European satellite reentered the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean between Alaska and Hawaii.
The agency is accepting applicants for the second cohort of its Mars simulator mission. Participants will live and work from a 3D-printed, 1,700-square-foot facility at NASA's Houston space center.
With a mass 17 billion times larger than our sun, this black hole is the fastest-growing black hole ever recorded, Australian National University said.
If successful, the uncrewed spacecraft would be the first U.S. lunar landing in more than 50 years, and would mean one giant leap for the commercial space sector.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan spoke to NPR's Morning Edition about Alexei Navalny dying in prison — and his briefing of U.S. congressional leaders on new Russian "anti-satellite capability."
An unmanned lunar spacecraft has captured and transmitted data analyzing lunar rocks, an achievement that could help provide clues about the origin of the moon, a Japan space agency official said
