All upcoming Astronomy & Space programs

Philosopher Ben Bramble argues that we are often told humanity’s destiny lies beyond Earth—complete with Martian cities, asteroid mining, lunar industries, and even “backup planets.” Drawing on his book Lunacy: Ten False Promises of the New Space Age, he contends that many of these visions rest on misunderstandings about risk, progress, and what truly makes a human future genuinely good. If we care about humanity’s long-term flourishing, he suggests we should look less to Mars—and more carefully at our own planet.

The moon has been a visible aspect of human life and culture since long before even the first written records, with cultures around the world creating art, artifacts, and writing depicting the moon and its changing face. Matthew Shindell, the National Air and Space Museum’s curator of earth and planetary science, provides a guided tour of the moon and the historic love affair with Earth’s only natural satellite, weaving together the various narratives and themes that have given the moon meaning throughout human history.

On July 23, 1999, the Space Shuttle Columbia launched NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory into an orbit that takes it about a third of the way to the moon. Since then, Chandra—operated for NASA by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory—has sent back to Earth images of the spectacular remains of exploded stars, found black holes, and contributed to the study of dark matter and dark energy. A panel of experts from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Northrop Grumman takes you behind the scenes to see how one of the most powerful space telescopes ever built operates.

Humans have watched displays of the Northern Lights in awe for centuries. Some cultures thought these colorful curtains of light arose as sparks created by the tail of an Arctic fox or from epic battles in the night sky. Sky & Telescope senior editor J. Kelly Beatty explores the fanciful explanations for these dancing lights, how powerful bursts from the sun create them, and when and where you're most likely to see an auroral display.

The universe is far stranger than science fiction ... and it’s all real. Kimberly Arcand of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory leads a journey through weird and wild places in the cosmos, from merely mind-bending to truly extreme. Along the way meet quasars powered by supermassive black holes, city-sized neutron stars, and pulsars that keep time more precisely than atomic clocks, plus some wild worlds orbiting distant suns.