Who Would You Send on a One-Way Trip to Mars?

Here's something to ponder over Thanksgiving dinner: who among your fellow diners would you send on a one-way trip to Mars? Or would you choose to go yourself and leave all you know behind for an uncertain future as a bold explorer?Two scientists, astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington St...
November 23, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

The Georgian Planet: A Case of Clever Marketing

On March 31, 1781, William Herschel, a German musician and composer, looked through a homemade 7-foot-long telescope in his back garden in Bath, England and saw something odd. He thought it was a comet, but it didn't act quite like other comets. And when scientists of the time calculated the object...
October 26, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

NASA to Fly Mission Into the Sun

NASA and other space agencies have a host of satellites aimed at the Sun, taking pictures and gathering data that scientists are using to better understand how the star we depend on works. None have ever gotten close to the Sun, though. A 1958 National Academy of Science panel recommended that NASA...
September 07, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

What's Next in Space?

Probes and landers sent into the final frontier will bring us closer to answering cosmic mysteries
August 2010 | By Mark Strauss

A Spanish Breakthrough in Harnessing Solar Power

Solar technologies being pioneered in Spain show even greater promise for the United States
August 2010 | By Richard Covington

Happy Mars Day!

The National Air and Space Museum is holding its annual Mars Day today. Visitors can learn about current and upcoming Mars missions from NASA scientists, compete in a Red Planet Quiz Show and view a Martian meteorite. (Check out Around the Mall's Five Reasons Why You Need to be at Mars Day.)For tho...
July 16, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

Music of the Heavenly Spheres (Part 2) — Holst, Haydn, Handel and More…

Apollo with his famous lyre is the Greek god of music. This son of Zeus was also closely associated with the Sun and is often assumed to be the Sun god Helios by a different name. In other polytheistic circles, none of the gods of music in Hindu, Norse, Japanese or Egyptian mythologies were associa...
June 23, 2010 | By Brandon Springer

Music of the Heavenly Spheres (Part 1)

From time immemorial, humans have looked in wonder at the cosmos and attempted to express their awe through art. Astronomers, from Ptolemy to Kepler, commented on the great dance of the heavenly spheres and the harmonies of the celestial bodies of Sun, Moon and Earth. Musicians and composers have s...
June 22, 2010 | By Brandon Springer

Lost Soviet Reflector Found on the Moon

In "Dark Energy: The Biggest Mystery in the Universe" from the April issue of Smithsonian, writer Richard Panek describes an experiment that measures the distance between the Earth and the Moon:Twenty times a second, a laser high in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico aims a pulse of light at t...
April 28, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

The Sun Is More Than a Blob of Yellow

We've got a lot of eyes on our Sun. No, not yours and mine (you shouldn't be looking directly at the Sun anyway). I mean the artificial eyes on cameras in spacecraft. The newest of those spacecraft is NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which began transmitting images to Earth earlier this week. The...
April 23, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

Air Pollution as Seen From the Skies

From Mt. Etna to China to the Sahara, these striking satellite images of air pollution are from both natural and man-made causes
April 20, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

Saturn’s Polar Hexagon

This is definitely one of our solar system's weirder features: a hexagon that circles the north pole of Saturn (image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona). The shape isn't carved into the planet's surface; it's a constant feature in the atmosphere. It has puzzled scientists since it was first sp...
April 09, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

Phobos, A Martian Moon

This odd-shaped chunk of rock, as imaged by the Mars Express spacecraft last month, is Phobos, the larger of Mars' two moons. The moon is about 27 by 22 by 19 kilometers in size and despite its solid appearance, is about 25 to 35 percent porous (in the 1950s and 1960s, scientists speculated the tha...
April 02, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

Take Flight Over Mars

It will be years, decades, before humans explore Mars. Until then, we'll just have to rely on robots and satellites. And talented 3D-animators.Doug Ellison took advantage of the thousands of images from the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to create the animation above. Ray Vi...
March 18, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

Hubble Takes New Pluto Pics

These new images of Pluto from the Hubble Space Telescope's are the most detailed ever made of the dwarf planet. They may be a little blurry, but what do you expect when your camera is more than two and a half billion miles from its subject?NASA aimed the HST at Pluto to get better images of the d...
February 05, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

Picture of the Week—Iron in the Sun’s Corona

The sun is a big ball of gas, mostly hydrogen. That hydrogen undergoes fusion, producing both the radiation that keeps us warm and heavier atoms, mostly helium but also oxygen, carbon and other elements. (You can find a good lesson about the sun here.)Our sun has an atmosphere, though you can't see...
January 08, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

NASA's New Lunar Rover

The Smithsonian Institution pitches in to help NASA prepare for its next lunar mission with a new "home on wheels"
January 2010 | By Megan Gambino

Visualize More Sunshine

We're past the winter solstice (finally!) and, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, getting a bit more sunlight every day. It's hard to see a difference yet—in Washington, D.C., the days are lengthening by only about half a minute per day this week. (You can chart your local sunrise and sunset time...
December 28, 2009 | By Laura Helmuth

Picture of the Week—The Swirls of Mars

The atmosphere on Mars is very different from Earth's. It is composed primarily of carbon dioxide, which condenses into dry ice at the poles during winter. And it's thin, with only one percent of the pressure of the Earth's atmosphere. But it sure is pretty at times, especially as seen through the ...
December 18, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

The Secrets Within Cosmic Dust

Dust captured by a spacecraft from a comet's tail holds clues to the origin of the solar system
December 2009 | By Robert Irion

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