A meteor exploded in the sky above Russia Friday morning. But astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says that's tiny compared to asteroid 2012 DA14, which will be flying by the Earth Friday afternoon.

A meteor streaked across the sky in Russia today, reportedly causing hundreds of injuries. The meteor, which was captured on video, came as many were focused on another space object, 2012 DA14, which will fly within a few thousand miles of Earth today. Neil deGrasse Tyson is the director of the Hayden Planetarium and host of Star Talk Radio.

"Hey kids," said physicist Tadashi Tokieda, "Wanna see a magic trick?" He pulled out a Slinky and did something that amazed the kids, & their dad Steve Strogatz. Steve, along with Neil deGrasse Tyson, explains what the gravity-defying Slinky trick reveals about the nature of all things great and small (including us).

Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses NASA and the future of space travel, now that NASA has put human space flight on hold. In Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier , he shares his thoughts on topics from the missteps that shaped the recent history of space travel to how aliens, if they existed, might go about finding us.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was on the Lopate Show to discuss the future of American space travel, now that NASA's space shuttle program has ended. He also told us that he's a fan of Broadway musicals. Find out what else Neil's been reading and listening to.

After half a century at the forefront of space exploration, NASA’s been hit by hard times. Last year, its groundbreaking and celebrated space-shuttle program was shuttered. The cosmos won’t see another American spacecraft for at least another decade, and that once dreamed of trip to Mars — not too long ago a serious interest of the U.S. government — isn't even close to being a priority.

NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed the discovery of a planet in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. A NASA researcher says the Earth-like planet would have a surface temperature around 70 degrees Fahrenheit. This makes it a so-called "Goldilocks planet" — not too hot, not too cold, just right to support life. Researchers have also measured the largest black holes yet. A team of UC Berkeley scientists have confirmed the discovery of the two biggest black holes yet to be documented. Each black hole is 10 billion times larger than our sun.

On Thanksgiving week, the big stories were the consumer's holiday shopping start-up — Black Friday, of course. The turkey was barely cold this year before family members were out the door to hit the box stores for the biggest deals of the season. In Washington, the debt committee was the most expected failure all year. And pepper spray went from a crime deterrent to an Internet meme.

On Saturday, NASA will be launching the new rover "Curiosity," also known as Mars Science Laboratory. The mission is meant to examine chemical ingredients to see if the planet can support human life. The spacecraft will explore a crater the size of a large lake. Curiosity is delivering a rover equipped to test if there is methane in the air. This could be a key sign that the "Red Planet" may be able to support life.

Just a few months ago, the future of NASA seemed in doubt. But the space agency announced on Wednesday a new rocket design that it says will be the centerpiece of a deep-space exploration program for decades to come. The Space Launch System could lift astronauts farther than ever before, making it eventually possible to journey to Mars.

The space shuttle Atlantis returned this morning, marking the end of an era. The space shuttle program began with the launch of Columbia on April 12, 1981. The program advanced space exploration into the twenty-first century. Contrary to the Apollo missions, which sparked fierce competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the space shuttle program existed mostly in an era of collaboration and cooperation between nations.

The largest flare on the sun since December of 2006 has erupted, sending up a large cloud of charged magnetic particles, which appeared to cover almost half of the solar surface. The National Weather Service Space Weather Prediction Center warns that this will likely lead to geomagnetic storm activity. Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks with us. deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium at New York's American Museum of Natural History, and host of NOVA scienceNOW, produced by our partner WGBH.

Just after the Big Bang, the universe was a primordial soup made of light. Then, it started belching out matter. Neil deGrasse Tyson explains how deeply shocking this is, and Marcelo Gleiser reveals an imperfection in the laws of physics that makes our very existence possible.

The mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson posed a big question about mirrors in one of his best-known books: Through the Looking-Glass (yup, Dodgson's pen name was Lewis Carroll). Natasha Gostwick of Storynory reads an excerpt that gets at the heart of the trouble: is mirror milk any good to drink? ...

Photographs of Mercury have come to earth for the first time. The Messenger spacecraft entered Mercury's orbit on March 17 and has just sent back its first batch of photographs. The very first image received shows a crater near the planet's southern pole, an area that has never been seen before. Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and Director of the Hayden Planetarium and host of "Star Talk Radio." He helps explain why these photos are important.

When the space shuttle Discovery lands at Kennedy Space Center later today, its odometer will read somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000,000 miles. The shuttle has flown 39 missions in its 27 year career. After today's landing, it will retire on planet earth. With Discovery's retirement, an era of American space exploration comes to a close; and, due to political and economic realities at home, future chapters remain in doubt. Yesterday, the US National Research Council reported that two planned rover missions to Mars, which NASA intended to launch along with ESA in 2018, may be about $1 billion outside of the U.S. budget.

Today, Leonard talked to Professor Mike Brown about his book, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming. In the book, Professor Brown recounts how his discovery of a 10^th "dwarf" planet in the solar system inadvertently led to uproar in the astronomical community—and the eventual demotion of Pluto as a full-fledged planet. The conversation reminded us of a series of angry letters from Pluto defenders published in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s book, The Pluto Files. (Mr. Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Natural History Museum, appeared on our show to discuss his book in December 2009.) These letters came from an unlikely source: third-graders.  One letter writer accused him of being a “Pluto-hater”; another offered a carefully drawn picture of Pluto, just in case the director had had a hard time identifying it. Below, we’ve put scans of our favorites, courtesy of NOVA’s website. Let us know your favorite letter in the comments below!

For the first time in over four hundred years, a lunar eclipse lands on the winter solstice. On the morning after this auspicious coincidence, we catch up with some professional star gazers to get a sense of the event’s astronomic and historical significance. We speak with Neil deGrasse Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium and host of NOVA's "Science Now," along with Cameron Hummel, a PhD Student at Columbia University’s Department of Astronomy. 

A mysterious case of the topsy turvies and a return to the question of what felines feel when they fall.