It’s not every day that you hear science stories on sports radio. But the Rosetta mission, which involved the impressive feat of landing a robot on a swiftly moving comet, provided an exception. Steve Czaban of ESPN Radio took a break from his usual obsessive football and basketball chatter, if only briefly, to voice his admiration for Rosetta and its slo-mo, balletic conveyance of the Philae lander onto 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In terms of public appreciation of science, the nod was gratifying. But it also reminded me why Science News is needed.
Czaban lauded the prowess and chutzpah of the engineers behind Rosetta, but he didn’t say why the mission exists or what key scientific questions it hopes to answer. That deeper view, often missing from mainstream media reports about science, is what Science News offers every issue, on as many aspects of science as we are able — from the headline grabbers like Rosetta to the more arcane but still fascinating search for the genetic roots of tameness in felines.