Orbital Path signs off with a site visit to NASA’s mysterious and extraordinary building 29.

Billion-year-old asteroid dust, coming right up!

Astronomers investigate a mystery that is 13 billion years old.

NASA develops a futuristic space laser. Launches it into orbit. And aims it directly back at planet Earth.

Humans! Time to get over your three-dimensional selves. 
Brian Greene — world renowned physicist, bestselling author, NOVA host, and serial Colbert guest — explains why.

Has a Bronx plumber’s son become the Einstein of our time?

Three billion years ago, there were organic molecules on Mars. But was there life?

Adults don’t have all the answers — or all the questions. In our second edition of TELESCOPE, Michelle grapples with an 8th-grader’s question about the fate of the Earth.

Adam Riess was only 41 when he was named a Nobel Prize winner. The Johns Hopkins distinguished professor of astronomy shared in the award for his work on something called “dark energy” -- a discovery that over the past 20 years has profoundly shifted our understanding of the universe. Riess made news again recently when he and colleagues working with the Hubble Space Telescope announced new findings about the rate at which the universe is expanding -- findings which simply cannot be explained...

Adults don’t have all the answers — or all the questions. So Michelle takes on some astronomical queries from 8th-graders.

In the time of the dinosaurs, two stars spiraled to their deaths. And 130 million years later, they taught humans the origin of gold.

Science for science’s sake may be luxury we can do all without — until, as happened during the 1980s, it quite literally saves the world we live in.


In this darkest season of the year, Dr. Michelle Thaller and NASA astronomer Andrew Booth curl up by the fire. Gazing into the embers, red wine in hand, they consider the meaning of the winter solstice — on other planets. Like Uranus, where parts of the planet go 42 earth years without seeing the sun. Or Mars, where winters are made colder by an orbit politely described as “eccentric.” Or Saturn — where winter’s chill is deepened by the shadow of the planet’s luminous rings.  Marshmallow,...

NASA has been on the lookout for rogue asteroids for years. Then astronomers in Hawaii glimpsed a massive, cigar-shaped object — from another solar system.

These days, astrophysicists like Dr. Michelle Thaller use instruments to probe the distant reaches of our galaxy, and far beyond. They use interferometry, the Hubble space telescope, and other technology impossible to imagine when the constellations of the winter sky were named. But, as the season changes and Orion returns to view, Michelle still finds plenty of wonder left for us to see — even with the naked eye — in the cold, clear air of a winter’s night.

 Orbital Path is produced...

Almost two years ago, Orbital Path launched with an episode on our fascination with space aliens. But what’s really going on out there on KIC8462852?


Physicists are coming to terms with a strange new concept of Time — strange and new, perhaps, to many western minds. But it’s a notion that feels at home in the mountain kingdom of Bhutan.

It’s time we get over out three-dimensional selves. 
Brian Greene — world renowned astrophysicist, New York Times bestselling author, NOVA host, and serial Colbert guest — explains why.

Michelle and NASA astronomer Andrew Booth retreat to the comfort of the hot tub — and Andrew reveals one of his deepest fears: Mathematics.

People have dreamed of making this trip for millennia. Next year NASA launches the first ever voyage to the sun.

NASA astronomer Andrew Booth joins Michelle in the hot tub to drink a glass of chardonnay, and talk weird science.

There was a time before planets and suns. A time before oxygen. You could say there was time, even, before what we think of as light. Back in 1989, the Big Bang theory was still in question. But that year, a NASA team led by cosmologist John Mather launched a mission to probe the earliest moments of the universe. Mather won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE). This work dramatically confirmed the Big Bang theory — and, as part of it, Mather and...

NASA is relying on hi-tech lasers — and some vintage U.S. Navy hand-me-downs — to learn about the polar regions of a remarkable, watery planet. It's located in the Orion spur of our galaxy. NASA scientists have detected mountain ranges completely under ice. But the remaining mysteries of the ice here are profound, and what the science tells us could have dramatic impact on human life. In this episode, Dr. Thaller visits with two key members of NASA's IceBridge mission — Christy Hansen,...

The big one is coming! That is, the total solar eclipse of Aug. 21. Dr. Thaller shares her wisdom on how best to view the eclipse and its larger implications for science.