Stories by Saswato R. Das

Instruments may fail, but humanity’s most distant sentinel will keep exploring, and inspiring us all

A spacecraft has uncovered in lunar soil some traces of Earth’s ancient atmosphere that were key to the development of complex life

Under the simplest assumptions, the measured mass of the Higgs could mean the universe is unstable and destined to fall apart. But don’t worry—it won’t happen for billions of eons

New findings that improve predictions still fall short of giving humanity a head's up on the havoc a solar storm might wreak on Earth

Fifty years ago AT&T launched Telstar 1, the first commercial communications satellite, right into the middle of a radiation storm produced by a nuclear test

The first images from a rodent research project that has set out to map the whole mouse brain are now publicly available

The Indian government says its prototype tablet computer will cost only $35, but past attempts at building inexpensive PCs have fallen short

NASA's MESSENGER probe has not even orbited Mercury yet, but it has already changed the prevailing view of the innermost planet as a dead, static world

The International Year of Astronomy marks the 400th anniversary of German astronomer Johannes Kepler's breakthroughs as well as those of his better-known Italian contemporary

Researchers propose a novel approach to producing biofuel using diatoms

A firsthand report from India on the excitement, superstition and scientific study generated by today's historic event

A son of the Cold War tells what it was like from the losing side of the Space Race--and how the U.S.S.R.'s space program fizzled after Sputnik and Gagarin

Historic telescopes through the ages, from Galileo to the 21st century

The American Museum of Natural History's new movie focuses on what the stars have wrought

Engineers are deploying sensors to monitor the condition of some of the world's most famous bridges

Replacing electronic switches with purely optical ones will become the technological linchpin for networks that transmit trillions of bits each second