Planet

The notion of landing astronauts on Mars has long been more fantasy than reality: The planet is, on average, 140 million miles from Earth, and its atmosphere isn't hospitable to human life. But a human voyage to the planet is now, for the first time, within the realm of possibility, according to space advocates inside and outside government. As a result, plans for a mission around the planet, and ultimately for lengthier stays, have been sprouting like springtime flowers. The new momentum, some space experts say,...

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — A new satellite hovering nearly 450 miles above the Earth appears to working flawlessly as it embarks on a 10-year mission to document the planet's surface, scientists and engineers at the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Resources Observation and Science Center said Monday. Landsat 8 is sending more than 400 data-filled images per day back to the EROS center north of Sioux Falls, where they will be archived and made available for free download by scientists or anyone...

The Kepler Space Telescope, the celebrated discoverer of worlds around distant stars, may have found its last planet. NASA announced Wednesday that the telescope, which to date has cost $600 million to build and operate, has lost the ability to point accurately. It's not dead, but by going wobbly it can't do the precision observations necessary for spotting signs of "exoplanets. " Kepler is 40 million miles from Earth, too far away to be fixed even if NASA still had a space shuttle and could throw together a...

For new views of an ancient planet, National Geographic visited all seven continents, collected 250 hours of film and chronicled the natural forces that combine to shape Earth. Earth scientist Ian Stewart, the show's host, examines how various systems mesh to make Earth a unique presence in the solar system. "It was captivating to look at the Earth as a finely tuned machine and how it all works together," said Ashley Hoppin, executive producer of the five-hour, three-night project "Earth: The Biography.

I share Mike Tidwell's feeling of urgency about global warming ["To really save the planet, stop going green," Outlook , Dec. 6]. I disagree, though, with the notion that daily, personal responsibility comes at the expense of more profound change. Of course we need to call our senators, and, no, swapping light bulbs will not by itself pull us back from the abyss. But as we engage our fellow citizens with small, shared sacrifices, we are creating a new environmental ethos that is changing our culture.

Regarding the Oct. 31 front-page article " A world growing — and growing grayer ": Fear of declining birth rates in developed countries serves to divert attention from climate change, mounting food and drinking-water shortages, species impoverishment and the host of far more pressing economic and ecological disasters that are already upon us as a result of unrestrained population growth. Raising birth rates would, in the short term, only add to the excess of dependents reliant on a graying workforce.

The Oct. 28 news story "Economics of climate change in forefront" missed the key point. Of course politicians will argue about whether climate change legislation will "slow U.S. economic growth," because economic growth is assumed to be a top priority. But that assumption is simplistic and outdated. Stabilizing the climate is all about stabilizing the economy: moving it toward a "steady state" that is neither growing nor in recession. The economy is predominantly fossil-fueled, and that will not change on a dime.

Getting a good look at Andrew Rogers's art can be tough. It helps to have a satellite. Or a helicopter. Or a plane. The picture above was taken from a hot-air balloon drifting over central Turkey. Rogers used stone walls to sketch this horse across the rocky hills of Cappadocia. The figure is enormous, almost 200 feet wide. It took 450 people to construct it. This horse is one of the dozens of pieces Rogers has scattered over all seven continents. You've never heard of him, right?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposes lifting the moratorium on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and on the Outer Continental Shelf. She won't even allow it to come to a vote. With $4 gas having massively shifted public opinion in favor of domestic production, she wants to protect her Democratic members from having to cast an anti-drilling election-year vote. Moreover, given the public mood, she might even lose. This cannot be permitted. Why? Because, as she explained to Politico: "I'm trying to save the...

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — A new satellite hovering nearly 450 miles above the Earth appears to working flawlessly as it embarks on a 10-year mission to document the planet's surface, scientists and engineers at the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Resources Observation and Science Center said Monday. Landsat 8 is sending more than 400 data-filled images per day back to the EROS center north of Sioux Falls, where they will be archived and made available for free download by scientists or anyone...

The notion of landing astronauts on Mars has long been more fantasy than reality: The planet is, on average, 140 million miles from Earth, and its atmosphere isn't hospitable to human life. But a human voyage to the planet is now, for the first time, within the realm of possibility, according to space advocates inside and outside government. As a result, plans for a mission around the planet, and ultimately for lengthier stays, have been sprouting like springtime flowers. The new momentum, some...

Happy Earth Day! Earth Day started 43 years ago as a way to get people to think about conserving, or protecting, the Earth. But it's also a great day to celebrate the very cool planet that we all share and to learn more about the interesting people, places and animals on it. With some help from a new book titled "Where on Earth?" KidsPost discovered a few interesting facts to help get you excited about the place that we all call home. The Great Wall of China is a wall in China that was built by hand — that means no big bulldozers or...

There is a deeply appropriate resonance in the opening of "Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa" on Monday, Earth Day, at the National Museum of African Art. It is a large-scale, ambitious joining of the conversation by artists singularly positioned to weigh in. African people have humanity's longest-standing relationship to the planet, and the fact that they have been having artistic conversations about that relationship...

Planet-hunting astronomers revealed Thursday that they'd found two tantalizing worlds, seemingly congenial to life as we know it, orbiting a star 1,200 light-years away. Neither planet has been seen directly, and whether they actually harbor living things is speculative. Their presence has been inferred by the dimming of their parent star at regular intervals, as observed by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. Kepler 62-f is just a bit larger than Earth — 1.41 Earth radii, to be precise — and...

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim on Tuesday said climate change was a "fundamental threat" to global economic development as he called for a major new push to reduce extreme poverty over the next 17 years. The bank is in the middle of an internal debate over how to reshape its role in a world where the major developing nations — the core "customers" for its loans and programs — have become increasingly middle class and where states caught in civil war pose an intractable...

Saving the planet will be hell on Earth, we learn from "No Impact Man," a rather whimsical documentary that follows writer Colin Beavan through his year of "no" -- no TV, no carbon emissions, no elevators, no disposable diapers for his daughter, no refrigeration, no air-conditioning, no caffeine. But you know what they say: Behind every successful, self-flagellating environmental activist is a woman. And that's what saves both Beavan and the movie. An admitted "high-fructose-corn-syrup-addicted, screen-addicted, meat-eating...

As thousands of people prepare to convene in Brazil this month for the Rio+20 Earth Summit , scientists and environmentalists alike are sending a sharp message: The planet is in dire straits. On Wednesday, the United Nations Environment Program issued a report showing that the world has made significant progress on only four of the 90 most important environmental objectives agreed on through the U.N. process. Gains have come in eliminating ozone-depleting substances , phasing out...

Saturn and Jupiter stride up to the cosmic home plate in April and deliver runs of fun with a fabulous, fleet moon . At the start of April, the ringed planet Saturn rises in the east-southeastern sky before 10 p.m., and by the middle of the month it ascends an hour earlier. This plump gaseous planet appears to us at zero magnitude, which is bright enough to see in Washington's light-polluted night heavens. By the end of April — specifically on April 28 — Saturn rises in the east exactly when the sun sets in the...