NASA will never be listed on NASDAQ. It’s already a wholly owned subsidiary of, well, all of us—which is the way it’s supposed to be with taxpayer-funded government agencies. But you could be forgiven for thinking that the full name of NASA is actually NASA, Inc., what with all the talk in the last decade about privatizing and commercializing at least part of the work the space...

Planets are like puppies—they come in all kinds of sizes, all kinds of colors and they’re often found in litters. That’s not the way things used to seem. It wasn’t until 1992 that the first known planet orbiting a star other than our sun was confirmed. In the years since, the exoplanet population has exploded, thanks mostly to the Kepler Space Telescope, which went aloft...

Here’s hoping there are aliens at Area 51. For one thing: they probably have cool spaceships. For another, the extraterrestrials are said to have arrived in 1947, so if they were going to eat us, they likely would have done so by now. Finally, answer this question: What’s more interesting, a world with aliens or a world without them? Area 51 has been much in the news lately, ever...

NEW YORK (AP) — Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson will keep his job as head of the Hayden Planetarium at New York’s American Museum of Natural History after the museum concluded its investigation into sexual misconduct accusations against him. A museum spokesman said in a statement Thursday that based on the results of the investigation, Tyson “remains an employee and...

July has already been full of space-related celebrations and history, but there’s one more big event in store: the Delta Aquarid meteor shower will peak at the end of July, and NASA meteor expert Dr. Bill Cooke has some advice for all the stargazers out there: “bring bug spray and get comfy.” The Delta Aquarid meteor shower technically lasts over a month, but the show will be...

This is a version of the TIME Space newsletter that went out July 26, 2019.   Dear readers, Jeff Kluger is out this week. I’m Alejandro de la Garza, a researcher and reporter at TIME, and a writer on all things technology. Humanity might have gotten a tiny bit closer to interstellar travel this week, with a very, very small satellite. That satellite, dubbed LightSail 2 by its creators...

(LITTLE ROCK, Ark.) — The Little Rock Zoo says Trudy, believed to be the oldest Western Lowland gorilla in captivity, has died at age 63. Zoo spokeswoman Susan Altrui said zookeepers found Trudy dead when they checked on her Wednesday morning. Altrui says Trudy was the oldest gorilla in the records of zoos accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, an international accrediting...