Alan Boyle

NASA Faces Another Shift in Its Leadership — and in Its Vision

November 15, 2025

The next few months are likely to bring a dramatic transition for NASA, under the leadership of a new administrator who has new ideas about changing the course of the space agency.

The last stop in a literary Grand Tour portrays Pluto the way it really is

October 31, 2025

NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto has forced astronomers to rewrite their textbooks — but that’s not all: In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, space scientist Les Johnson explains how New Horizons forced him to rewrite "Pluto," the final novel in Ben Bova's Grand Tour series.

X-59 Super-Quiet Supersonic Aircraft Makes Its First Test Flight

October 29, 2025

Lockheed Martin Skunk Works has executed the first test flight of the X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft in partnership with NASA. The first flight was subsonic, but eventually the plane will demonstrate technologies aimed at reducing sonic booms to gentle thumps.

SpaceX Veteran Lays Out Impulse Space's Roadmap for Making Deliveries to the Moon

October 14, 2025

Impulse Space, the California-based venture founded by veteran SpaceX engineer Tom Mueller, has unveiled its proposed architecture for delivering medium-sized payloads to the moon, starting as early as 2028.

SpaceX Successfully Puts Starship Through 11th Flight Test to Get Ready for the Next Generation

October 14, 2025

SpaceX closed out a dramatic chapter in the development of its super-heavy-lift Starship launch system with a successful flight test that mostly followed the script for the previous flight test.

Native Americans Had Their Own Tales to Tell About Space Aliens — and Here's a New One

October 13, 2025

In a newly published novel titled “Hole in the Sky,” Cherokee science-fiction author Daniel H. Wilson blends Native American tales about alien civilizations with up-to-date speculation about UFOs, now also known as unidentified anomalous phenomena or UAPs.

A Blaze of Glory: SpaceX's Starship Goes the Distance in 10th Flight Test

August 27, 2025

After a string of setbacks, SpaceX executed the most successful flight test of its Starship launch system to date, featuring a first-of-its-kind payload deployment and a thrilling Indian Ocean splashdown.

Schweickart Prize Goes to a Plan for Managing Asteroid Mining Risks

June 26, 2025

This year's $10,000 Schweickart Prize is going to a team of students who are proposing a panel to address the risks that could arise when we start tinkering with asteroids.

After Awesome Launch, SpaceX's Starship Spins Out of Control

May 27, 2025

SpaceX's Starship super-rocket got off to a great start for its ninth flight test, but the second stage ran into a host of issues and made an uncontrolled re-entry.

Dazzling Pictures Celebrate Hubble Space Telescope's 35 Years in Orbit

April 23, 2025

This week brings the Hubble Space Telescope's 35th birthday — but instead of getting presents, the Hubble team is giving out presents in the form of four views of the cosmos, ranging from a glimpse of Mars to a glittering picture of a far-out galaxy.

NASA's Lucy Probe Snaps Its Closeup of a Weirdly Shaped Asteroid

April 21, 2025

NASA's Lucy spacecraft made a successful flyby of the second asteroid on its must-see list over the weekend, and sent back imagery documenting the elongated object's bizarre double-lobed shape. It turns out that asteroid Donaldjohanson — which was named after the anthropologist who discovered the fossils of a human ancestor called Lucy — is what's known as a contact binary, with a couple of ridges in its narrow neck.

Is There Life on an Alien Planet? Fresh Findings Revive the Debate

April 17, 2025

Two new studies have sparked fresh debate about a faraway planet with a weird atmosphere. One of the studies claims additional evidence for the presence of life on the planet K2-18 b, based on chemical clues. The other study argues that such clues can be produced on a lifeless world.

Asteroid 2024 YR4 Won't Hit Earth, But There May Be a Lunar Light Show

April 07, 2025

Although astronomers have ruled out a smash-up between Earth and an asteroid known as 2024 YR4 in the year 2032, the building-sized space rock still has a chance of hitting the moon. In fact, the chances — slight as they are — have doubled in the past month.

Fresh Findings Strengthen the Case for Dark Energy's Evolution

March 20, 2025

It's looking more and more as if dark energy, the mysterious factor that scientists say is behind the accelerating expansion of the universe, isn't as constant as they once thought. The latest findings from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, or DESI, don't quite yet come up to the level of a confirmed discovery, but they're leading scientists to rethink their views on the evolution of the universe — and how it might end.

How Humans Can Reinvent Themselves to Live on Other Worlds

March 08, 2025

Let's face it: Space is a hostile environment for humans. Even on Mars, settlers might have a hard time coping with potentially lethal levels of radiation, scarce resources and reduced gravity. In "Mickey 17" — a new sci-fi movie from Bong Joon Ho, the South Korean filmmaker who made his mark with "Parasite" — an expendable space traveler named Mickey (Robert Pattinson) is exposed over and over again to deadly risks. And every time he's killed, the lab's 3D printer just churns out another copy of Mickey.