When we think of space travelers, we imagine humans in space suits, not flying insects; yet, the first travelers to survive space flight were not astronauts, but fruit flies. In 1947, a small capsule ...

As NASA prepares for long-term bases beyond Earth, scientists are turning their attention to some of our planet’s tiniest ...

Space travel has always pushed the boundaries of human exploration, but what about the food that sustains astronauts on these long journeys? As researchers turn to unconventional options, insects are ...

The sun is out... and so are the bugs. While insects can be a buzzkill at summer cookouts and parties, you don’t have to relinquish the backyard to the invaders. The best way to do battle with an army ...

When you look up into the sky and realize that approximately 99.85 percent of the mass of the solar system is concentrated in the sun, it makes all of Earth's creatures—including us humans—look pretty ...

NASA's Deep Space Food Challenge seeks to choose the next menu of the upcoming space missions to the Moon and Mars in the future. A chef from French chef Alain Ducasse's team (R) prepares a dessert ...

Insects may sometimes seem like a scourge on humanity, but without them, our lives would look very different. The quintillions of insects that inhabit our world help feed us, clothe us and have ...

A suit a thousand times thinner than a human hair or more can help microscopic animals survive a harsh vacuum, such as would be the case in outer space, researchers say. These newly developed ...

In a simulation of Mars, a space rover is testing a control system with an unusual inspiration: insect brains. The software was created by Opteran, a startup based in the UK. But the idea originated ...

The biodiversity of bugs serves as a planetary early warning system. But tracking their numbers takes big thinking. It’s dark. Vegetal decay hangs thick in the air, trapped beneath the rotting innards ...

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With freely available radar data from satellites, biodiversity in forests can be analysed very well. Researchers now report that biodiversity even of tiny insects can be reliably modeled from space.