Astronomy

This month’s issue covers the reasons it’s so hard to go back to the moon, the science of empathy and new advances in treating sickle cell disease

Illuminating the experience of people living with sickle cell could improve patients’ lives and enhance all of medicine

A biography of the scientist whose work led to fears of a ‘population bomb’

When different chickadee species meet, they sometimes choose each other as mates—with surprising results

Best baseball batting order; mummies demystified

Improving sickle cell care by expanding treatment options, advancing new therapies and amplifying the voices of people with the disease

A new generation of treatments addresses the trauma that often underlies addiction

In Pillars of Creation, Richard Panek gets up close to the JWST

Life expectancy for people with sickle cell in the U.S. has increased to about 50 years, but some people with the disease still face stigma and other barriers in health care

NASA's Artemis moon program faces challenges the Apollo missions never did

Increased funding and new public health policies for sickle cell research are needed to ease the burden on low-income nations and improve patient care

Sickle cell disease causes severe pain that’s hard to treat, but researchers are finding new ways to offer relief

The difficulties of the Svalbard seed repository illustrate why we need to prevent climate disaster rather than plan for it

In a postapocalyptic world on the verge of its next crisis, history gets rewritten

Swatch has again teamed up with ESA to give space fans a new opportunity to design a custom watch featuring breathtaking images of Earth from space.

The European Galileo satellite navigation system keeps growing: a new pair of satellites has joined the constellation after a journey on a Falcon 9 rocket, launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on 18 September at 00:50 CEST (17 September 18:50 local time).

Newly released images of Mars reveal a "smiley" salt deposit on the Red Planet's surface. A related study suggests that similar deposits, which were left behind from ancient lakes, may be a good place to look for signs of former life on Mars.

The almost fully illuminated Harvest Moon was no match for the dazzling aurora display.

A ring of asteroid debris could have orbited Earth for tens of millions of years, and perhaps even have altered the planet's climate

A ring of asteroid debris could have orbited Earth for tens of millions of years, and perhaps even have altered the planet's climate