A writer tries to understand his dad through the space race.

A bizarre 1970 Arctic killing over a jug of raisin wine shows that we need to think about crime outside our atmosphere now.

Millions of human artifacts circle the Earth. Can we clean them up before they cause a disaster?

What happens when SpaceX takes over your sleepy Texas town.

The schism at the heart of cosmology.

On space rocks and the people who chase them.

What if everything we know about dark matter is totally wrong?

After the explosion of the Columbia shuttle in 2003, two American astronauts aboard the International Space Station suddenly found themselves with no ride home.

Franklin Chang Díaz immigrated to the U.S. at 18, became an astronaut, tied the record for most spaceflights, and now might hold the key to deep space travel.

As America has turned away from searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, China has built the world’s largest radio dish for precisely that purpose.

On astrophysicist Sara Seager and her obsession with discovering distant worlds.

A 6-part investigation of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.

“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”

Six months after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, a member of the Presidential commission that investigated the crash presents his personal findings.

It’s highly unlikely that a gigantic space rock will crash through our atmosphere and destroy civilization as we know it. But it’s not impossible either. Which is why a small but growing community of scientists and astronomers are scrambling to spot and destroy dangerous asteroids long before they hit us.

When Elon Musk went to Russia to buy some rockets.

Forty-five years ago, Buzz Aldrin became the second man to walk on the moon. It made him one of the most famous people in the world. And it has haunted the rest of his life.

An oral history of The Right Stuff.

Mars One says it will send four people to colonize the planet by 2025. The company claims more than 200,000 have paid to apply for the privilege. But a deep look at Mars One’s plan and its finances reveals that not only is the goal a longshot, it might be a scam.

Elon Musk’s dreams of colonizing Mars.

On the Cold War and the Space Race.

“You are reading this because you have no idea what NASA is doing. And NASA, tongue-tied by jargon, can’t figure out how to tell you. But the agency is engaged in work that can be more enduring and far-reaching than anything else this country is paying for.”

A profile of the highest-paid female executive in America, who was born male.

A study in building spaceships.

"Mostly, the spaceship builders did not come out of their trailers or houses, though our local guides claimed they didn't mind the occasional tour. They were so serious they could not see that others might laugh. Some of their grounds looked measured and neat; some were spilling over or scraped to dust. Most were single, a few married, some widowed or divorced. The married ones interested us most—what sorts of agreements had they come to? were the ships built for two?"

In deep space, a physicist tries to cope with his isolation.

"He read several classic novels and philosophical texts to pass the next few days and exercised on the stringy, wiry contraption collapsed into one wall. The long hibernation had melted the muscle from him and congealed the quick currents of his mind, but he had to be alert, intelligent, and at his peak physical condition when he arrived. He was supposed to be disciplined. He was not supposed to replay his wife’s voice over and over, with longing and anxiousness. So he selected his parents’ recordings."

Space is only getting weirder.