Cosmic Journeys

From the fires of our sun's birth, twin planets emerged. Nature draped one world in the greens and blues of life while enveloping Venus in acid clouds, high heat, and volcanic flows. What caused this?

Explore the challenges of interstellar flight and the technological possibilities that may one day send us on a long voyage out into the galaxy. What imperatives will define the mission: exploration and science, or a struggle to survive?

The Milky Way harbors millions of black holes, the ultra-dense remnants of dead stars. Further out, there are black holes of incomprehensible size.

Asteroids have smashed into Earth before. What are the chances we’ll get hit again? Armed with new technologies, scientists prepare for the inevitable day, a decade, century, or millennia from now.

Astronomers are probing the high-energy cosmic frontier with a series of key missions: Fermi, Swift, Chandra, NuSTAR, and Hubble. Their goal: find out how the universe works on a fundamental level.

Scientists look out deep into space hoping to measure the size of the universe based on the relatively miniscule portion of space observable from Earth.

Astronomers study stars and ultra-dense objects near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy to learn more about the black hole at its heart.

A run-down of increasingly powerful energy events from frigid clouds of gas to the hottest places in the universe and powerful black holes.

Several countries plan to send spacecraft to the moon, potentially leading to a permanent human presence in space.

Two Voyager spacecraft speed toward the boundary of the solar system, providing astronomers with valuable data about the cosmos.

A collision detected in the Hydra constellation reveals what scientists believe to be the birth of a black hole from two neutron stars.