Joe Palca

A new study suggests that being a morning person makes you slightly less susceptible to depression or mental illness. It, however, is not a very big effect.

Space scientists on Earth have improvised a tool on the Mars rover to help them figure out how a giant mountain on the Red Planet came to be. Their surprising conclusion: It's likely windswept sand.

As a child on a New York farm, Eben Bayer helped his dad shovel wood chips in the barn. That's where he noticed a stretchy web of fungus that became the basis of his biodegradable packing material.

Government, academic and industry researchers often depend on each others' work and funding. The partial shutdown is getting in the way of some of that collaboration and research.

Fast Radio Bursts are extremely powerful bursts of energy coming from far beyond the Milky Way. No one knows what's causing them but a new telescope in Canada should help find an explanation.

Early in 2019, China hopes to land a rover — the first soft landing on the moon's far side. The mission is exploratory, and will lay groundwork for a trip by Chinese astronauts to the lunar surface.

Two briefcase-sized satellites gave the control room of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in November what scientists had never been able to get before: real-time information about a spacecraft's landing.

The Mersenne prime was discovered by a computer in Ocala, Fla., on Dec. 7. Mathematicians have spent the past two weeks verifying the calculations.

In a quest to rapidly advance its scientific depth and breadth, China is recruiting scientists from around the world. Some from the U.S. say the greater funding for school and research is freeing.

NASA's InSight lander arrived on the red planet Monday. Its mission is to explore the interior of the planet in a way no previous probe has been able to do.

NASA's spacecraft InSight is scheduled to land on Mars Monday afternoon. It's expected to deploy a sensitive seismometer and temperature probe to let scientists explore the planet's interior.

There's a new probe on Mars. After Monday's tricky landing, NASA's InSight spacecraft is to deploy a sensitive seismometer and temperature probe to let scientists explore the planet's interior.

A genetic analysis of samples taken from a large UK health database suggest that people who are more sensitive than their peers to the bitter taste of caffeine tend to drink more coffee — not less.

NASA mission managers haven't heard from the Martian rover Opportunity since June. A dust storm interfered with communication but the storm is over now and engineers hope to hear from the rover soon.

The European Space Agency's BepiColombo will take seven years to reach the innermost planet in our solar system, where temperatures at the surface can reach 800 degrees Fahrenheit.

Astronomers have found a distant dwarf planet that appears to confirm the existence of Planet Nine, a giant planet lurking in the outer reaches of the solar system.

A researcher in Australia has invented a low-tech, insecticide-free trap that might be able to reduce bites from a particularly pesky mosquito in some neighborhoods.

New options for nonaddictive pain treatment are sorely needed. One researcher is borrowing from the field of cancer nanomedicine to test an idea that could bring relief to chronic pain sufferers.

Harbor seals use sensors in their whiskers to help discern predator from prey. It's all about the way the water whirls, say scientists who are now training computers to be better trackers, too.

Mars, Earth and the sun have lined up, a celestial orientation known as opposition. This particular opposition occurs at a time when the orbit of Mars takes it closest to the sun.