All Stories by Lisa Grossman
- Space
NASA races to have the first moon base and nuclear-propulsion spacecraft
A $20 billion plan for a moon base by 2030 and the launch nuclear-propulsion space exploration raises hopes, but caution given deep government cuts.
- Planetary Science
A private moon lander challenges ideas about lunar volcanism
New measurements from the Blue Ghost lander suggest that thin crust, not just radioactive heating, shaped the moon’s dark lava plains.
- Space
In a rare event, the moon got a massive new crater
A crater as wide as two American football fields formed in spring 2024, a size expected roughly once a century. A NASA orbiter got to watch.
- Planetary Science
NASA’s DART spacecraft changed an asteroid’s orbit around the sun
A 2022 NASA mission changed the orbit of the asteroid Dimorphos around its companion. New data shows their joint orbit around the sun also changed.
- Plants
Chickpeas can grow in moon dirt and make seeds
Chickpeas produced seeds in simulated lunar soil, offering clues for future space farming.
- Planetary Science
A Titan collision may link Saturn’s tilt, its moon Hyperion and its rings
A new study proposes that a crash between Titan and another moon spawned Hyperion and, much later, destabilized Saturn’s inner moons into rings.
- Space
NASA scraps its 2027 moon landing, adds two missions in 2028
Rather than land astronauts on the moon, the Artemis III mission will now focus on docking and space suit tests in low Earth orbit.
- Science & Society
On moonshots and Minneapolis
Space exploration can bring people together and reflect deep societal divisions.
- Space
Artemis II is returning humans to the moon with science riding shotgun
NASA’s Artemis II could be the first time human eyes set sight on the farside of the moon — and there are things human eyes can see that cameras can’t.
- Cosmology
A massive cosmic ring may challenge a key assumption about the universe
At 3.3 billion light-years across, the ring may challenge the “cosmological principle” that the universe looks uniform at sufficiently large scales.
- Planetary Science
A newly spotted asteroid spins faster than any of its size ever seen
Among the first finds from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, the discovery hints at a population of exceptionally strong asteroids.
- Astronomy
A double cosmic explosion could be the first known ‘superkilonova’
The blast may have been a kilonova — a type of neutron star merger — in the wake of a more traditional supernova.
