Planetary Science Stories

When you think about national park and public land astronomy programs, you might picture remote locations far from city lights. But a recent NASA Earth to Sky training, funded by NASA’s Science Activation Program, challenges that assumption, demonstrating how urban…

The NASA Community College Network (NCCN) and the American Astronomical Society (AAS) have teamed up to provide an exciting and impactful program that brings top astronomy researchers into the classrooms of community colleges around the United States. The Harlow Shapley…

When asteroids hit the Moon, the impacts carve out craters and with enough energy and pressure, melt parts of the rocky surface. Often, the white hot, gooey melt (it’s like lava, except that it doesn’t erupt from underground) sloshes around…

The milestone highlights the accelerating rate of discoveries, just over three decades since the first exoplanets were found. The official number of exoplanets — planets outside our solar system — tracked by NASA has reached 6,000. Confirmed planets are added…

The NASA STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Enhancement in Earth and Space Science (SEES) Internship Program at the University of Texas Center for Space Research is a national high school research experience that provides students with direct access to…

Each month, NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office releases a monthly update featuring the most recent figures on NASA’s planetary defense efforts, near-Earth object close approaches, and other timely facts about comets and asteroids that could pose an impact hazard with…

What Would It Take to Say We Found Life? We call this the podium test. What would it take for you personally to confidently stand up in front of an international audience and make that claim? When you put it…

Advancing Single-Photon Sensing Image Sensors to Enable the Search for Life Beyond Earth A NASA-sponsored team is advancing single-photon sensing Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) detector technology that will enable future NASA astrophysics space missions to search for life on other planets.…

Benedetta Facini has participated in not one, but many NASA citizen science projects: Cloudspotting on Mars, Active Asteroids, Daily Minor Planet, GLOBE, Exoasteroids and International Astronomical Collaboration (IASC). Now, she might got to space, as she was selected as part…

While the Artemis II crew will be the first humans to test NASA’s Orion spacecraft in space, they will also conduct science investigations that will inform future deep space missions, including a lunar science investigation as Orion flies about 4,000…