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The upcoming launch of NASA's powerful James Webb Space Telescope should let astronomers see what some of the universe's first stars and galaxies looked like soon after the Big Bang.

The James Webb Space Telescope will let astronomers peer farther into space than ever before, to see what galaxies looked like when the universe was newly born.

NASA's TESS telescope finds a small, iron-rich planet which could help explain the origins of Mercury, the innermost planet in our solar system

A new look at nearly 3.7 million-year-old fossil footprints uncovered in Tanzania shows that multiple species of early humans lived together at the same time.

NASA is about to launch the first mission of its new planetary defense office. A spacecraft will attempt to knock a small asteroid off course by ramming into it.

NASA should work toward a new space telescope that could view small planets around distant stars with the potential to host life, expert panel says

Scientists have gotten the best estimates yet of exactly how much baleen whales, the largest animals on the planet, can consume in one day. Their caloric intake is mind-boggling.

Scientists who want to understand what's beyond our solar system have designed an interstellar spacecraft that could go out farther and faster than the famous Voyager probes.

New space companies are touting space tourism. But so far the final frontier has been the playground of the rich or famous, plus a few everyday folks who had a bit of luck.

Benjamin List and David MacMillan were awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in chemistry for coming up with a new tool for constructing molecules that has advanced pharmaceuticals and green technology.

Francis Collins has served longer than any other director of the National Institutes of Health since 1971. He tells NPR he did not anticipate the culture wars taking over scientific fact.

Some scientists say discrimination against gay and lesbian government employees during James Webb's tenure as NASA administrator should preclude him from having a telescope named in his honor.

The James Webb Space Telescope will let scientists study small, rocky planets around distant stars in more detail than ever before. After decades of work, it could head into orbit later this year.

Hubble's iconic images captured the public's imagination. Will NASA's next big space telescope, which sees infrared light, produce astronomy scenes that pack a similar punch?

An experiment involving dog treats suggests our canine pals may understand the difference when a human withholds a treat by accident and when they do so on purpose. But don't press your luck.

A NASA mission to a potentially dangerous asteroid has let researchers map out its future trajectory like never before.

Carnivorous plants are rare, but now botanists say they've found one that's long been overlooked. It lives just outside Vancouver, British Columbia, and in other parts of the Pacific Northwest.

A mysterious disease is killing off the West Coast's enormous sunflower sea star, so researchers have launched an ambitious effort to breed this species in captivity.

On mountaintop glaciers of Alaska, Washington and Oregon, billions of tiny black worms are tunneling upward to the barren, icy surface. What lures them, and how do they survive the frozen depths?

It's a smackdown of one space monster by another: Scientists have made unprecedented observations of two black holes gobbling two neutron stars — among the weirdest space collisions ever detected.