It is almost certain that Earth will be hit by an asteroid large enough to exterminate a large percentage of our planet's life, including possibly over a billion people, according to researchers. But as such cataclysmic collisions occur on average only once in a million years or so, are they really worth worrying about?
Black holes, dark matter, and mysterious dark energy together make up 96 percent of the universe—the so-called dark side of the cosmos. Scientists are slowly unraveling the secrets of these enigmatic forces, shedding light on the past and future structure of the universe.
As three separate missions journey to Mars this month to search for signs of life, one scientist claims that he already proved there's life on the red
planet—in 1976.
Strong evidence of water on Mars has propelled NASA to launch rovers to investigate. Robots destined for two different locations are tested in the "sandbox," at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which simulates the Martian landscape. Science correspondent Chad Cohen gets a Martian preview tonight on our U.S. cable television program National Geographic Today.
When the space shuttle Columbia broke up on Saturday, February 1, a group of Colorado-based researchers whose firefighting experiment was on board felt the tragedy all the more deeply because they had worked closely with the astronauts during the previous few days to fix a glitch in the experiment.
The destruction of the space shuttle Columbia in the final minutes of a rare mission purely devoted to space science claimed seven lives. It also dealt a devastating blow to scientists eager to conduct research in the weightlessness of space.
When the space shuttle Columbia broke up on Saturday, February 1, a group of Colorado-based researchers whose firefighting experiment was on board felt the tragedy all the more deeply because they had worked closely with the astronauts during the previous few days to fix a glitch in the experiment.
Space shuttle Columbia broke up just minutes before it was scheduled to land this morning, killing all seven astronauts on board. Story and photo gallery.
Some strange, six-legged astronauts are in orbit above the Earth. A team of U.S. high school students has launched 15 ants with the space shuttle Columbia, hoping to learn how space's extremely low gravity might affect the ants' behavior.
Methane clouds have been discovered near the south pole of Titan, resolving a fierce debate about whether clouds exist amid the haze of the moon's atmosphere. Titan is Saturn's largest moon, larger than the planet Mercury, and is the only moon in our solar system with a thick atmosphere.
The Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., draws 9 million visitors each year, making it the most popular museum in the world. But cramped facilities keep four-fifths of the museum's collection out of sight. When the 100th anniversary of humankind's first flight lands a year from today, the museum will unveil a stunning new exhibit facility.
Deep in a 19th-century iron mine in a Minnesota state park, in a football-field-size cavern, physicists are building a 6,000-ton steel trap for neutrinos, sub-atomic particles so elusive scientists don't even know if they have any mass.
Space scientists have hitched a ride aboard a U.S. fighter jet to search the twilight regions of space for evidence of small asteroids known as "vulcanoids"—named for a speculative planet called Vulcan. If they exist, such asteroids may be debris left over from the formation of the planet Mercury.
Forget Starship Troopers and steely-eyed astronauts—the right stuff for spaceship travel to faraway solar systems is more likely to be a family affair conducted by mom, dad, the kids, kinfolk, and generations to come, says a University of Florida anthropologist.
Human travel to Mars may happen sooner than we think, but human safety is paramount in space missions, and traveling such a long distance poses health problems never faced before.
