Science

Flying people to an asteroid is really hard, so NASA wants to bring part of it to them. But some former astronauts say the $2 billion plan was born of politics and budget cuts, and makes little sense.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs, otherwise known as drones, are aircraft piloted by remote control or programmed to follow a flight path using GPS as a guide. They can be as small as a book or as large as a commercial airliner. From toys to weapons, they are filling a range of niches, including research and conservation efforts.

We spoke with Max Messinger, Founder of Linn Aerospace and Research Fellow with Wake Forest University Center for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability. He has spent the past several years developing, building, and flying a variety of drones to monitor the health of the Peruvian Amazon rainforests.

Big Data is everywhere — even the skies. Astronomer Andrew Connolly shows how large amounts of data are being collected about our universe, and how it will help lead to new discoveries.

Scientist Riccardo Sabatini says we have the technology to read the human genome and predict things like height, eye color, age — all from a vial of blood.

To study dogs' brain activity, scientists had to train canines to hold absolutely still for eight minutes without restraint. But how do you get a dog to freeze that long inside a clanging MRI scanner?

The mission aims to circle a hill-sized asteroid for two years, then skim its surface and bring a hearty sample of 4.5 billion-year-old dirt back to Earth.