Space & Missions
The Grand Canyon looks vast until you set it beside Valles Marineris on Mars, a…
Our sense of planetary scale collapses when a Martian scar dwarfs even Earth's most iconic chasm.
Science & Engineering
A century ago Iceland was among the poorest countries in Europe, huddled on bare…
How a nation transformed geological curse into the world's most efficient heating system.
Science & Engineering
A glimpse of home was among the last images Voyager 1’s cameras ever sent
A spacecraft billions of miles away captured Earth's final portrait before its cameras went dark forever, leaving scientists to wonder what lay just beyond that last frame.
Earth & Life
Many picture Everest as the last untouched wilderness, yet snow from near the…
Even Earth's highest fortress cannot escape the microscopic debris of human ambition.
Earth & Life
The longest mountain range on Earth is one almost nobody has ever seen
Ask most people to name the longest mountain range on Earth and you'll hear the Andes, or maybe the Himalayas.
Space & Missions
The North Star is not the brightest star in the sky — not even close
Ask most people to name the brightest star in the night sky and a lot of them will say the North Star.
Science & Engineering
Every second the Sun destroys a mountain of itself
Start with the number, because it doesn't quite fit in your head. According to a NASA educational resource, "Every second, a star like our Sun converts 4 million tons of its material into heat and light through the process of nuclear fusion.
Universe
Even at noon Titan sits in permanent dusk
Stand on Titan at noon and there is no noon to speak of. The sky is a hazy orange, thick like soup, with no blue anywhere and no clear line where the sky meets the ground.
Human Factors
Researchers tracked 122 people for three months and found that on days they visited…
There is a particular kind of flatness that comes from moving through the same loop of places, day after day.
Human Factors
Why the years seem to speed up as we age
In the 19th century, a French philosopher called Paul Janet proposed that time appears to accelerate by the proportion of life already lived.
Science & Engineering
Carl Sagan's team considered sending a nude photograph of a man and a pregnant…
In late 1971, after NASA approved the idea of sending a message aboard Pioneer 10, Carl Sagan was given just three weeks to prepare it.
Human Factors
Michael Collins, dubbed by the press "the loneliest man in history" while orbiting…
As the command module Columbia slipped behind the Moon on the afternoon of July 20, 1969 and lost radio contact with the world, Mission Control said over…
Psychology
Voyager 1’s famous Pale Blue Dot photograph was nearly never taken
On February 14, 1990, six billion kilometers from the sun, Voyager 1 swiveled around and took a photograph of Earth.
Science & Engineering
Many astronauts describe a quiet realization when they look down at Earth from orbit
NASA astronaut Christina Koch, a NASA astronaut selected for the Artemis II crew, has perhaps the cleanest description of what she sees from the cupola of the International Space Station.
Science & Engineering
The international space station has had continuous human presence for over…
What do you imagine is responsible for keeping a human being functional during six months in one of the most extreme environments our species has ever visited?
Human Factors
NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock said the thing he missed in orbit was the smell of…
The International Space Station is sealed, filtered, and controlled — and astronauts have described its smells as antiseptic, garbage-like, or metallic.