Life is Nothing

Come on, you're going to have to try harder than that. Get in there. Do you see it now? That's not a speck of dust on NASA's Juno spacecraft camera. That's a moon, orbiting its enormous mother planet in space. The teeny tiny moon is Amalthea, and though it was caught zipping in front of the very ruddy eye of Jupiter's long-lived high pressure zone, astronomers say this moon is in fact the reddest object in the solar system. Scientists think its hue is caused by sulfur from the nearby Jovian moon Io, a world with active volcanoes.

But a Hollywood blockbuster set decades in the future is no comparison to the real thing – even if it was directed by Christopher Nolan. Ten years after "Interstellar" hit theaters, NASA is now giving us a more personal experience of what would happen if we were to fall into a black hole. No, not even the most intrepid spacefarers are yet able to get anywhere near these massive behemoths, where the pull of gravity is so intense that even light doesn't have enough energy to escape their grasp.

But a Hollywood blockbuster set decades in the future is no comparison to the real thing – even if it was directed by Christopher Nolan. Ten years after "Interstellar" hit theaters, NASA is now giving us a more personal experience of what would happen if we were to fall into a black hole. No, not even the most intrepid spacefarers are yet able to get anywhere near these massive behemoths, where the pull of gravity is so intense that even light doesn't have enough energy to escape their grasp.

NASA is aiming to change that, and soon. The Artemis program, if all goes according to schedule, will return American astronauts to the moon within the next few years. The United States isn't alone, though. China is hoping to land astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade. Last week, it launched a probe to gather samples from the far side of the moon, with the goal of returning them to Earth. India and other countries have landed uncrewed craft on the moon in recent years as well. He missed a chance to be the first Black astronaut. Now, at 90, he's going into space SPACE He missed a chance to be the first Black astronaut. Now, at 90, he's going into space This time around, the space race isn't just about who gets there first. It's a race for resources, such as water, which could fuel further space exploration to Mars and other destinations. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson recently spoke to All Things Considered about the agency's ambitious goals for the...

There's a moon rock in the lobby of NASA's Washington, D.C., headquarters. Visitors are urged to rub their fingers over its smooth, worn surface to connect with one of the greatest achievements in human history: the Apollo missions that landed 12 American men on the moon. The rock is from the very last visit: Apollo 17, which returned to Earth in 1972. No one has returned to the moon since. And while NASA has done astonishing things over and over since Apollo — in recent years alone, it's flown a helicopter on Mars, smashed a spacecraft into an asteroid, and begun to redefine our basic understandings of space with the James Webb Space Telescope — the glory days of the moon landings feel, at times, like ancient history.

Anyone who has watched Matthew McConaughey plunge into a supermassive black hole in "Interstellar" may think they have a rough idea of what it'd be like to encounter one of these terrifying cosmic formations. But a Hollywood blockbuster set decades in the future is no comparison to the real thing – even if it was directed by Christopher Nolan. Ten years after "Interstellar" hit theaters, NASA is now giving us a more personal experience of what would happen if we were to fall into a black hole. No, not even the most intrepid spacefarers are yet able to get anywhere near these massive behemoths, where the pull of gravity is so intense that even light doesn't have enough energy to escape their grasp.