Stories by Lee Billings

Reports of unidentified flying objects in the northeastern U.S. are on the rise, but so far officials have few answers for alarmed residents

NASA’s presumptive next leader, billionaire private astronaut Jared Isaacman, already has big plans for the space agency

Observations from a retrofitted spy plane hint at a connection between powerful gamma-ray flashes and a thunderstorm’s lightning

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics was given to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for development of techniques that laid the foundation for revolutionary advances in artificial intelligence

Sooner or later a doomsday asteroid will wipe out most life on Earth—unless, that is, we prevent threatening space rocks from hitting us in the first place

A small asteroid, 2024 PT5, will spend the next two months alongside our planet as a mini moon before swooping back to deep space

The world’s first commercial space walk, performed by billionaire Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, tested new technology and was practically flawless

Starliner’s first crewed test flight has concluded with a successful touchdown—and two astronauts still in orbit awaiting a different ride home

The Polaris Dawn mission—a partnership between SpaceX and billionaire Jared Isaacman—will soar to historic heights and attempt the first-ever commercial spacewalk

New evidence points to a carbonaceous asteroid from the outer solar system as the culprit for Earth’s most recent mass extinction

Mysterious “leopard spots” on a Martian rock could be evidence of extraterrestrial life—or of mere lifeless chemistry. Finding out the truth may require bringing the rock back to Earth

On its first crewed flight, troubling technical glitches with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft have left two astronauts in limbo onboard the International Space Station

China’s Chang’e 6 mission has successfully returned samples from the moon’s far side, opening a new phase of the nation’s lunar space race with the U.S.

Failing hardware on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope may lead to less science, officials say, but the space agency isn’t ready to pursue a private repair mission

NASA’s head of heliophysics explains how we weathered the worst solar storm of a generation—and discusses the challenges we face in preparing for the next one

Years of careful planning helped safeguard against last weekend’s severe space weather, but we still don’t know how we’d cope with a monster event

A physicist, a philosopher and a psychologist are working together to bring better, smarter decision-making to the masses

Total solar eclipses have set the stage for major scientific advancements—everything from the discovery of helium to the testing of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Our space and physics editors go head-to-head over a classic mind-bending question.

We're talking about the big bang—but not in the way you might think. 

Defunct satellites and other pieces of orbital debris are pumping metals into Earth’s fragile upper atmosphere, with effects unknown

A planet-vaporizing impact is the leading explanation for a distant star’s curiously fluctuating light

Here’s what a historian who has studied J. Robert Oppenheimer for two decades has to say about the new Christopher Nolan film on the father of the atomic bomb.

Researchers, using the galaxy as a detector, believe they have detected gravitational waves from monster black holes for the first time.