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After a nine-year journey of 3 billion miles, a piano-sized, power-packed NASA spacecraft has an upcoming date with history that some University of Colorado Boulder students, faculty and alumni wouldn’t miss for the world.

Southern Californians and writers love to blame the hot, dry Santa Ana winds for tense, ugly moods, and the winds have long been associated with destructive wildfires. Now, NOAA researchers have fo und that on occasion, the winds have an accomplice with respect to fires, at least: Natural atmospheric events known as stratospheric intrusions, which bring extremely dry air from the upper atmosphere down to the surface, adding to the fire danger effects of the Santa Anas, and exacerbating some air pollution episodes.

This summer, middle and high school students are helping build and test 3-D structures that complement and mimic the cutting-edge ‘photo origami’ research conducted at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Two of the five recipients of the 2015 Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship are CU-Boulder alumni. Ari Beser (PolSci’11) and Ryan T. Bell (Hist’01) will study and document international stories over the next year.

The confidence of Colorado business leaders dipped slightly though remained optimistic going into the third quarter of 2015, according to the Leeds Business Confidence Index released by CU-Boulder’s Leeds School of Business.

A new University of Colorado Boulder framework used to screen hundreds of organic chemical compounds used in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows that 15 may be of concern as groundwater contaminants based on their toxicity, mobility, persistence and frequency of use.

It’s been difficult to explain patterns of toxic mercury in some parts of the world, such as why there’s so much of the toxin deposited into ecosystems from the air in the southeastern United States, even upwind of usual sources. A new analysis led by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder shows that one key to understanding mercury’s strange behavior may be the unexpected reactivity of naturally occurring halogen compounds from the ocean.

A University of Colorado Boulder space center will fly high-tech hardware on the commercial SpaceX Dragon spacecraft launching to the International Space Station Sunday, the 50th space mission flown by BioServe Space Technologies since it was founded by NASA in 1987.

A University of Colorado Boulder scientist unexpectedly discovered two lichen species new to science in the same week while conducting research in Boulder Colorado, near the city’s eastern limits.

If planets had personalities, Mars would be a rock star according to recent preliminary results from NASA's MAVEN spacecraft. Mars sports a "Mohawk" of escaping atmospheric particles at its poles, "wears" a layer of metal particles high in its atmosphere, and lights up with aurora after being smacked by solar storms. MAVEN is also mapping out the escaping atmospheric particles. The early results are being discussed at a MAVEN-sponsored "new media" workshop held in Berkeley, California, on June 19-21.