Trump's defunding of NASA would be catastrophic

"This is probably the most uncertain future NASA has faced, maybe since the end of Apollo," Casey Dreier tells me over the phone. Dreier is the chief of space policy at The Planetary Society [...]

Boeing Starliner astronauts finally head home, nine months later

Eight days. That’s how long Boeing Starliner’s mission — its first flight test with crew aboard — was supposed to last. But this mission has been singular in almost every way, and astronauts B [...]

Why on Earth would NASA build a nuclear reactor on the Moon?

"Duffy to announce nuclear reactor on the moon" is not a headline I imagined reading before last week. Sure, as a sci-fi loving nerd, I could see a future where nuclear power played a role i [...]

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft is about to have its second close encounter with an asteroid

A NASA spacecraft will make a close approach to an asteroid in the main belt on Sunday afternoon, in the second of several asteroid flybys planned for its 12-year mission to study remnants of the earl [...]

2025 is going to be another big year for commercial moon missions

As soon as late February, a lunar lander will depart from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on its way to the moon carrying instruments that could investigate what’s just beneath the surface. Barely two [...]

Senate passes minibus bill funding NASA, rejecting Trump's proposed cuts

After a tumultuous 2025 that saw it lose around 4,000 employees, NASA finally has an operating budget for 2026, and one that largely preserves its scientific capabilities. On Thursday, the Senate pass [...]

NASA's DART spacecraft changed a binary asteroid's orbit around the sun, in a first for a human-made object

When NASA crashed a spacecraft into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos in 2022, it altered both Dimorphos' orbit around its parent asteroid, Didymos, and the two objects' orbit around the sun, a [...]

NASA used Claude to plot a route for its Perseverance rover on Mars

Since 2021, NASA's Perseverance rover has achieved a number of historic milestones, including sending back the first audio recordings from Mars. Now, nearly five years after landing on the Red Pl [...]

NASA finally has a leader, but its future is no more certain

After a rudderless year and an exodus of around 4,000 employees due to Trump administration cuts, NASA got what may be its first piece of good news recently. On December 17, the Senate confirmed billi [...]