On this date in 1986, the Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven people on board—including physicist Ronald E. McNair, who was the second African American to enter space. StoryCorps sat down with McNair's brother, Carl, to remember him.... READ ON

Space operas would be pretty boring without some way to go very far, very fast. Traveling at 40,000 miles per hour—the speed at which Voyager is zipping along—it would take around 17,000 years for the Vulcans to fly to Earth and make first contact. Chances are, by the time they got here we would have already bombed ourselves to extinction and been replaced by evolved apes. Nobody would pay to see a movie like that. To keep things interesting, here are a few fictional ways to go very fast in science... READ ON

On December 31, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) satellite captured this stunning solar eruption, which occurred over the course of four hours. According to NASA, "Magnetic forces drove the flow of plasma, but without sufficient force to overcome the sun’s gravity much of the plasma fell back into the sun." SDO captured the video—shown at a high cadence of an image every 36 seconds—in extreme ultra violet light. The satellite's main mission is to keep an eye on space weather,... READ ON