Going to hyperspace? Not exactly...George Lucas had it wrong. No, I'm not talking about the prequels to Star Wars! It was something much earlier. People could be forgiven for not knowing this, but Star Wars was not George Lucas's first successful fil...

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Episode description:  In this bonus episode, go behind the scenes of key moments from Artemis II with NASA experts who made them possible. Engineers who launched the rocket describe the hours-long process that led to a successful liftoff. The leader...

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Affiliation: NASA Ames Research Center

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Annika Bellot focuses on international law and decarbonization efforts to help save small island states like Dominica, where she grew up....

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NASA announced Friday Janet Petro, center director for the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is retiring.

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The EmFlume1.5 is great for explaining common hydraulic phenomena in rivers. This demonstration introduces viewers to the transitions between supercritical and subcritical flow, and vice versa, and how they create some of the dynamic, impactful, and potentially dangerous points in river systems. Check it out here!

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With so many worlds to explore and so much to learn about our own, funding NASA is absolutely essential....

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Tucker Davidson of Audubon wrote a lovely piece about slowing down and listening to, and looking for, the birds:

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An unconformity is a gap in the recording of earth's history, similar to missing pages in a book. These breaks are more common than is realized. Stratigraphers, who organize geologic history, estimate that the time spans of non deposition exceed that of episodes of deposition. These gaps could be fleeting, as in a river meandering away and then reoccupying the old channel, or they could indicate conditions of non deposition and erosion lasting tens to even hundreds of millions of years.Geologists recognize a hierarchy with the longer lasting breaks often pointing to major changes such as a mountain building phase accompanied by a prolonged sea level fall. As sediment deposition stops, erosion will often sculpt the top of the rock formation into an uneven surface. Eventually sediment deposition will resume. Geologists term such a break between the two phases of rock formation as an erosional unconformity.Recently, the Geological Survey of India added the Eparchean Unconformity to its growing list of Geo-Heritage sites of national importance. This is one of those major long lasting erosional breaks seen in the Precambrian terrains of India. The chosen site is near Kalinjar Fort, in Banda District of Uttar Pradesh. Image Source: Geological Survey of India.

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Since much of Papua New Guinea lies close to the equator where the Coriolis effect is weak, the risk of tropical cyclones striking the island nation is relatively low, especially in its northern areas. Nevertheless, unusually warm sea surface temperatures and atmospheric conditions favorable to storm formation brought powerful Tropical Cyclone Maila dangerously close to the islands of Bougainville, New Britain, and New Ireland in April 2026, fueling intense rainfall.

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Laramie Jensen's interest in inorganic and analytical chemistry led her to the ocean. And then to the North Pole....

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Our streets are crowded with commuters and delivery vehicles, but when a police car or fire engine approaches with its lights and sirens on, drivers clear the way. In the coming years, drones for deliveries and other commercial tasks will become common in the skies over our communities, and NASA is working to ensure first responder vehicles in the air get the same kind of clearance that they do on the ground.

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Now in its fifth year, the annual conference was created to highlight the critical climate-driven health and environmental impacts affecting our shared community....

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My next post about the Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures is from our move across the country from Utah to New York. Along the way we visited 13 National Parks as well as some other sites. This was the 11th National Park along the way.

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"Mother, mother ocean, after all the years I've foundMy occupational hazard beingMy occupation's just not around"

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Physics of the Cosmos...Physics of the Cosmos CommunityTDAMM SIG Meeting, 11...AboutCommunityProgram Analysis Group (PhysPAG)Science GroupsMeetingsCosmic PathfindersScience GapsEarly Career WorkshopsOpportunitiesMissionsStudiesNews & EventsResources?...

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Aynsley Kretschmar, a soon-to-be graduate of the M.A. in Climate and Society program, reflects on the skills she's gained from her time at Columbia, as well as what she's most excited about for her future. ...

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An extreme drought that has gripped the Southeast for months helped fuel two large, destructive, human-caused wildland fires in southern Georgia in April 2026. The Pineland Road and Highway 82 fires together burned more than 50,000 acres (20,000 hectares) as of April 28, according to the Georgia Forestry Commission.

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By Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center 

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How much did Artemis II resonate with people -- or glance off them?...

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The bright whites of mountain snow, muted browns of the arid plains, and gem-like blues and teals of glacial lakes typically dominate the Patagonian color palette. But for a short time in the austral autumn, temperate deciduous forests add splashes of warm tones. On April 12, 2026, a break in the clouds allowed the Landsat 9 satellite to capture an image of reddish hillsides in the Magallanes region of southern Chile.

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M.A. in Climate and Society student Erin Frank shoots film around New York City. She says her camera and climate coursework have more in common than she expected....

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Over the years I've collected a few sightings in Oakland of actinolite, an uncommon-but-not-rare mineral in the Coast Range and Sierra foothills. This is my reference specimen, one I bought at a Russian River rock shop when I asked the owner for something local.

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The scientists behind threatened missions speak out....

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The through line for the western United States so far in the 2026 water year is simple: there's very little snow. With few exceptions, the mountains of the U.S. West have seen unusually little snow accumulation since October 2025, constituting a widespread snow drought. The lack of mountain snowpack has resource managers on alert going into the warmer months. Meager meltwater can affect hydropower production, agriculture, aquatic ecosystems, and wildland fire risk.

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