LIGHTHAVEN, ONE kilometre down Telegraph Avenue from the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is a rambling conference facility which dedicates itself to “hosting events and programmes ...

The dream of colonizing Mars has been an enduring vision, fueled by decades of science fiction, but recent developments in space technology are making this once far-fetched idea increasingly plausible ...

Landing on Mars once felt like a distant dream. Now, space agencies have sent rovers and landers to explore the Red Planet for decades. Scientists worldwide are thinking about how to make Mars a ...

Multiple plans exist to explore Mars in the coming decades using robotic and crewed missions. The ultimate goal of these missions is to determine whether human beings could live there someday. This ...

NASA and Elon Musk are racing toward the same destination, but they are not running the same race. While SpaceX talks in terms of the next launch window, NASA is quietly building a layered campaign of ...

A field known as synthetic biology has become one of the most highly anticipated in science. Its outputs range from golden rice, which is genetically engineered to provide vitamin A, to advances ...

Musk wants to send the first uncrewed Starship to Mars by the end of 2026, followed by human spaceflights in the years after. The first humans on Mars would be tasked with laying the groundwork to ...

When I usually examine lichens, I am in a forest, peering at frilly growths on tree branches with my hand lens. Or on exposed rocks high in the Alps, or old gravestones, or the rocky seashore, in the ...