Eleven-year-old Venetia Burney was eating breakfast at her home in Oxford, England, on the morning of March 14, 1930, when her grandfather delivered some exciting news. Clyde Tombaugh, an eagle-eyed assistant at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, had discovered visual proof of a long-theorized “trans-Neptunian object” on the edge of the solar system. The…

The European Space Agency (ESA) is searching for potential spacesuit materials that would best protect future lunar astronauts from the inhospitable conditions of the moon. On Jan. 19, the Paris-based intergovernmental organization signed a two-year agreement with Comex and its partners the German Institute of Textile Technology and Process Engineering and the Austrian Space Forum…

For freshly grown produce, space is truly the final frontier. But even astronauts will soon be able to abide by their mothers’ exhortations to eat more veggies. Following the much-celebrated harvest of a head of romaine lettuce aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2015, astronauts’ vacuum-packed vittles may be kicked up a notch as…

James Carter would be the first to admit that he is a children’s book writer, not a scientist. “I wrote Once Upon a Star very much as a starry-eyed poet, not an expert!” the U.K. author and songwriter said of his latest book, Once Upon a Star: A Poetic Journey Through Space (Doubleday Books for…

What do you do when you’re a self-described “fierce fan” of famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson? Write a children’s book about him, of course. That’s what husband-and-wife duo Kathleen Krull and Paul Brewer did with Starstruck: The Cosmic Journey of Neil deGrasse Tyson (Crown Books for Young Readers, 2018), a new picture book that tells…

What does it take to land a Rottweiler on one of Jupiter’s moons? Quite a lot, actually. Even a fictional sojourn to Io and Europa requires at least three authors, an illustrator, a handful of human reference models (plus a canine one), and nearly a dozen scientific and technical advisers, including a couple from the…

Clayton Anderson was at a bookstore in Omaha, Nebraska, when the ambush happened. “The manager of the store insisted that I come to the children’s book area,” the retired astronaut recalled. Anderson was meant to be signing copies of The Ordinary Spaceman: From Boyhood Dreams to Astronaut (University of Nebraska Press, 2015), a memoir about…

Young Amy Mainzer was one of the few children who looked forward to a trip to the dentist. In those pre-Internet times, the waiting room was one of the few places she could read about NASA’s Voyager missions. “Information was hard to come by back in the day,” said the now-grown Mainzer, an astronomer at…

It’s a good thing we don’t remember being born. An unceasing procession of strange smells, unfamiliar sights and alien sounds—not to mention cooing faces thrust into our fields of vision—the first moments of post-uterine life must have been utterly bewildering. We were barely acquainted with the mechanics of our nascent corporeal form, let alone the…

Researchers from Florida Polytechnic University are developing a “happy suit” that they say will protect astronauts from the psychologically harrowing effects of space travel. The technology’s network of wireless sensors would respond to the wearer’s vitals by recalibrating his or her environment in real time. These adjustments could include changes in temperature, light color, light…

As Lunar Module pilot for NASA’s historic Apollo 11 mission, Buzz Aldrin flew to the moon and back in a space capsule. Now, the former fighter pilot, aerospace engineer, bestselling author and reality-show contestant is setting his sights on a different kind of capsule—the kind you only hear about in fashion. Together with Sprayground, a…

The new Doctor Who has a new look. As portrayed by Jodie Whittaker, the first woman to take on the vaunted role, the 13th incarnation of the time-and-space-tripping Gallifreyan is all dressed up with everywhere to go. In a new photo from the BBC, the Broadchurch star flaunts shin-skimming, high-waisted teal culottes, mustard suspenders à…