Before former U.S. President Donald Trump incited a hostile insurrection against the Capitol, he’d already smashed wrecking balls through the ranks of government agencies. Among the many casualties was the truth about climate science, which NASA was routinely prevented from sharing with the public that supports it. I was the senior science editor for NASA’s […]

NASA is scheduled to launch another rover to Mars on July 20. Yawn. During the decade I worked at NASA, my job involved touring the Space Shuttle trainer, exploring experimental extraterrestrial habitats, holding meteorites and donning a bunny suit for the clean room, where satellites were built. My friends nicknamed me The Astronaut. “You’d be […]

You might have noticed that the air is a little bit cleaner since the COVID-19 shutdown. It’s true; measures put in place to slow the spread of the virus caused an overall slowdown in economic activity and there are fewer vehicles on the road. Some Earth orbiting satellites have observed this decrease in pollutants such […]

When scientists in the 1990s measured the amount of ice melting off the Greenland Ice Sheet, they observed it losing 25 billion tons of ice per year. Now a consortium of 89 polar scientists from 50 scientific institutions assessed the current rate of ice loss by combining 26 satellite datasets from 1992 through 2018 to […]

Most likely, when you toss your plastic trash into a recycle bin you believe you’re doing the right thing. You think your plastic waste gets magically whisked away to a recycle center where it will be transformed back into more useful plastic items. Recycling feels like a harmless way to get rid of stuff, a […]

Global warming is probably the greatest challenge of our lives. But denying the science or becoming so upset that you feel helpless are not solutions. News reports on climate change are shocking and generally leave little room for hope. Laura Tenenbaum, science communicator and senior science editor for the NASA website Global Climate Change: Vital […]