Lisa Grossman

Lisa Grossman

Astronomy Writer

Lisa Grossman is the astronomy writer for Science News. Previously she was a news editor at New Scientist, where she ran the physical sciences section of the magazine for three years. Before that, she spent three years at New Scientist as a reporter, covering space, physics and astronomy. She has a degree in astronomy from Cornell University and a graduate certificate in science writing from UC Santa Cruz. Lisa was a finalist for the AGU David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism, and received the Institute of Physics/Science and Technology Facilities Council physics writing award and the AAS Solar Physics Division Popular Writing Award. She interned at Science News in 2009-2010.

All Stories by Lisa Grossman

  1. Astronomy

    First 3-D map of a gas cloud in space shows it’s flat like a pancake

    An interstellar gas cloud dubbed the Dark Doodad Nebula looks like a wispy, thin cylinder. But it’s actually a flat sheet.

  2. Planetary Science

    Getting NASA’s Pluto mission off the ground took blood, sweat and years

    Alan Stern talks about the new book ‘Chasing New Horizons’ and what’s next for the spacecraft that got close to Pluto.

  3. Planetary Science

    NASA gets ready to launch the first lander to investigate Mars’ insides

    The InSight lander is launching to Mars on May 5 and is expected to be in position to sense seismic activity by early 2019.

  4. Planetary Science

    Last year’s solar eclipse set off a wave in the upper atmosphere

    The August 2017 solar eclipse launched a wave in the upper atmosphere that was detected from Brazil after the eclipse ended.

  5. Astronomy

    The latest star map from the Gaia spacecraft plots 1.7 billion stars

    The Gaia spacecraft’s latest data release brings the number of stars with precisely measured motions up from 2 million to more than 1.3 billion.

  6. Planetary Science

    Asteroids could have delivered water to the early Earth

    Shooting mineral pellets at a simulated planet suggests an impact wouldn’t have boiled all of an asteroid’s water away.

  7. Planetary Science

    Uranus smells like rotten eggs

    Planetary scientists detected hydrogen sulfide in Uranus’ upper clouds — the same compound that gives rotten eggs their terrible smell.

  8. Astronomy

    Young galaxies are flat, but old ones are more blobby

    A survey of hundreds of star systems precisely links the shape of a galaxy to the ages of its stars.

  9. Astronomy

    NASA’s TESS spacecraft launches to begin its exoplanet search

    After reaching its orbit in about two months, the telescope will start scanning nearby stars telltale dips in light that signal a passing planet.

  10. Planetary Science

    This meteorite’s diamonds hint that it was born in a lost planet

    Bits of metal nestled inside diamonds suggest the space rock could have formed in a Mars-sized protoplanet in the early solar system.

  11. Astronomy

    Delayed launch of NASA’s next exoplanet hunter is now set for tonight

    NASA’s next exoplanet hunter, TESS, launches today to seek planets in 85 percent of the sky.

  12. Space

    Lasers squeezed iron to mimic the conditions of exoplanet cores

    In the first experiment to measure what exoplanets might be like on the inside, scientists hit iron with 176 lasers at once.