Video Chat From Outer Space With These Custom Wallpapers Emily Lakdawalla • April 1, 2020 With much of the world now stuck at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems like the whole world — adults, kids, babies, cats, and dogs — is now using video-conference software to stay connected. Since...

Five Snapshots of how the Earth Looked at Key Points in its History Could Help us Find Habitable Exoplanets In the past few decades, astronomers have confirmed the existence of thousands of planets beyond our Solar System. Over time, the process has shifted from discovery to characterization in the hopes...

Our Responsibility to Deal more Kindly with One Another Bill Nye • March 25, 2020 It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration… than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with...

What is a black hole? Though the center is temporarily closed, we are still passionate about sharing science and space exploration. In this series, we’ll take a quick tour through a science or space topic. Today we are exploring black holes. Black holes have held our attention since their existence...

SpaceX teams up with space tourism agency to sell rides aboard its spacecraft SpaceX has signed a deal with a space tourism company to organize a trip orbiting the Earth for a handful of adventurous travelers. Space Adventures — which organized eight tourism trips to the International Space Station between...

Pentagon Will Modify Hundreds of Contracts for Coronavirus Response The Defense Department is ramping up the purchase of certain items, including ventilators, in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The Defense Department modified an existing government contract to purchase 8,000 ventilators from four vendors worth as much $84 million, with an...