NASA’s Human Research Program (HRP) uses research to develop methods to protect the health and performance of astronauts in space. In support of NASA’s goals for long-term missions on the surface of the Moon and human exploration of Mars, HRP is using ground research facilities, the International Space Station, and analog environments to monitor human health in deep space. NASA’s Artemis II mission was the first […]
NASA and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) launched the NASA Force website on Friday, opening applications for roles aimed at recruiting the nation’s top engineers and technologists to support America’s air and space program. NASA Force, a new hiring initiative developed in partnership with OPM, will recruit and place high-impact technical talent into mission-critical roles supporting NASA’s exploration, research, and advanced technology priorities, […]
Scientists are working to understand exactly how these waves behave, and the team behind NASA’s Heliophysics Audified: Resonances in Plasmas (HARP) citizen science project approaches this in a unique way: they compare the Earth’s magnetic field to a giant harp in space.
An observation made by NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) shows the chemical signatures of water ice (shown in bright blue) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (orange) in Cygnus X, one of the most active and turbulent regions of star birth in our Milky Way galaxy. The […]
The Republic of Latvia will sign the Artemis Accords during a ceremony at 9 a.m. EDT Monday, April 20, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will host Dace Melbārde, Latvia’s minister for education and science; Jānis Beķeris, chargé d’affaires at the Embassy of the Republic of Latvia to the United States; and […]
In this photo taken on April 6, 2026, a portion of the Moon’s far side is seen along the terminator—the boundary between lunar day and night—where low-angle sunlight casts long shadows across the surface. A section of Orientale Basin is visible along the upper right portion of the lunar disk, its structure subtly revealed under […]
Intensifying wildfires across the continent are spewing air pollution, putting human health at risk, particularly Americans living with chronic illnesses
As the historic lunar flyby comes to a close, space companies and nations around the world are also shooting for the moon. Upcoming landings aim to change the landscape of space exploration
Gretchen Kay Stuart has chronicled the work of a small team of biologists who are trying to keep a little known and breathtakingly beautiful endangered species from disappearing
A triple threat of pollution, extinction and warming temperatures is altering the way the planet smells. Scientists are only beginning to understand the stakes for humans
The large swallows have nested alongside human settlements for centuries. Now, the birds' breeding success depends on caretakers who are beginning to age out of the role
Wednesday evening, a human mission to the moon lifted off for the first time in more than 50 years. These 13 photographs capture what it was like to experience the moment
With an incredible sail and heavy bones that might have acted as ballast, Spinosaurus seems primed for snatching fish. The creature has long captivated the public, from its early mysteries to the recent discovery of a new species
A new experiment is testing the commercial success of fish traps in Washington and Oregon. Even as some conservationists embrace the technique, its return has reopened old wounds among local fishers
The snowdrop, or Galanthus, blooms when the world is still frozen. Gardeners enamored with the plant gather each year in Pennsylvania to celebrate its subtleties and endurance
Like the lead character of “Project Hail Mary,” some scientists are proposing ways that life might exist beyond a star’s “habitable zone,” often considered the gold standard of potential livability
A new study published in Nature Communications has shown that in the asymptotic limit, extracting the maximum possible work from many copies of a quantum system does not require knowing exactly what state that system is in.
Microfiber pollution from large-scale laundry operations is emerging as a significant and largely unseen environmental issue. New research led by the University of Portsmouth is using Cleaner Seas Group's industrial filtration technology—already deployed in commercial settings to better understand the scale of the problem and how it can be prevented before it reaches our waterways.
This week in science news: Researchers are calling to exploit sewage waste and manure to break U.S. synthetic fertilizer dependence. Wasps have begun disrupting the 10-million-year mutualism of ants and plants. And scientists have taken a step toward using CRISPR to silence the extra chromosome in Down syndrome.
A joint research team led by Professor Park Kyoung-Duck and Associate Director Suh Yung Doug of the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) has succeeded in realizing a high-efficiency quantum light source that emits bright lights even at room temperature. The study is published in the journal Science Advances.
A collaborative research group has developed a fully automated roll-to-roll manufacturing platform capable of producing large-area visible metalenses at a rate of 300 units per second, marking a major breakthrough in translating metasurface technology from the laboratory to real-world industrial deployment.
Researchers have found that a group of chemicals known as PFAS can be transferred from mother dolphins to their nursing calves, adding to the evidence that these persistent contaminants can be transferred from mothers to offspring during early development.
In subduction zones, the sites of the world's largest earthquakes, tectonic activity may generate a "pump" that transports long-buried subseafloor microbes back toward the seafloor, according to research presented at the 2026 SSA Annual Meeting.
Nitrogen (N) fertilizer supports global agriculture, but its use and overuse drive emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), a potent and long-lived trace gas. Incomplete understanding of N2O flux drivers makes it difficult to make spatiotemporal emissions predictions and evaluate management strategies for emissions reductions. N2O experts evaluated current sources of uncertainty and propose an initiative for accelerating advances in N2O measurement, analysis, and mitigation.
Thawing permafrost buried underneath rivers may be accelerating permafrost degradation faster than previously estimated in these inundated regions, according to new research shared at the 2026 SSA Annual Meeting.
Placed within a borehole drilled deep through the layers of a landslide, a fiber optic cable captured tiny, periodic stick-slip events that offer a unique glimpse at the complex movements within the landslide's shear zone.
Burning time for North American wildfires is going into overtime. Flames are lasting later into the night and starting earlier in the morning because human-caused climate change is extending the hotter and drier conditions that feed fires, a new study found.
Take a group of runners circling a track at unique, constant paces. Answering the question of how many will always end up running alone, no matter their speed, has vexed mathematicians for decades.
Tokyo is succeeding where the rest of the world has failed, reducing its reliance on Beijing for crucial rare earth elements—thanks to an enormous underwater deposit discovered on a remote island.
The White House has announced that NASA will work with the Departments of Defense and Energy to put nuclear reactors in orbit and on the surface of the moon.
In a letter obtained by WIRED, the Energy Information Administration tells two senators that it plans to develop a mandatory assessment of data centers' energy use.
From lava tubes on Mars to ice pockets on Europa, subterranean environments may offer the best chance of finding life—and living safely—beyond our planet.
Entire space programs have been canceled after a failure in the reentry phase. In the final test for Artemis II, astronauts will travel at 32 times the speed of sound as they return from the moon.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s sweeping changes to federal vaccine guidance are paused for now. But even if they’re reversed, lasting damage has already been done.
The moon gets hit by space debris all the time, but some of it is so large that the impact generates light that can be seen thousands of kilometers away.
The first images from Artemis II reveal what the moon looks like just 7,000 km from the surface—and confirm that NASA is ready to return to Earth’s satellite.
Artemis II remains on course for its lunar flyby as the crew shares historic photos of Earth, tests key systems for future lunar missions, and attempts to fix the toilet.
