Latest Ann Druyan Stories

Dr. Tony Phillips, Science@NASAOne day, years from now--or maybe billions of years, no one knows--aliens might be surprised to run across an old spaceship from Earth. Improbably far from home, the ancient probe is space cold, its nuclear power source spent long ago; an iconic white antenna points silently into the void, beaming no data to the species that made it. Yet this Voyager may speak to its finders. A golden record is fixed to the side of the probe, and if ET can decipher it, he might...

NASA will hold a special Science Update at 1 p.m. EDT on Thursday, April 28, to discuss the unprecedented journey of NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft to the edge of our solar system.The event will be held in NASA headquarters' Webb auditorium at 300 E St. SW, in Washington. It will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed at: http://www.nasa.gov  After 33 years in space, the spacecraft still are operating and returning data from about 10 billion miles away from our sun. The Voyagers...

NASA announced Wednesday the new Carl Sagan Postdoctoral Fellowships in Exoplanet Exploration, created to inspire the next generation of explorers seeking to learn more about planets, and possibly life, around other stars.Planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, are being discovered at a staggering pace, with more than 300 currently known. Decades ago, long before any exoplanets had been found, the late Carl Sagan imagined such worlds, and pioneered the scientific pursuit of life...

A mission that was supposed to last just five years is celebrating its 30th anniversary this fall. Scientists continue to receive data from the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft as they approach interstellar space. The twin craft have become a fixture of pop culture, inspiring novels and playing a central role in television shows, music videos, songs and movies from the 1980s and 1990s. Many of these fictional works focus on what would happen if an alien race were able to locate Earth via Voyager's...

LOS ANGELES -- The world's first spacecraft designed to be propelled by the pressure of sunlight was launched toward orbit Tuesday from a Russian submarine under the Barents Sea. Cosmos 1, a $4 million experiment intended to show that a so-called solar sail can make a controlled flight, lifted off at about 12:46 p.m. PDT as project organizers from The Planetary Society and Cosmos Studios monitored the launch from California. Confirmation of a successful launch was likely to take several...