A look at the men and women who work while the rest of the city sleeps. Text by Alexandra Schwartz, photographs by Adam Pape.

Everyone’s talking about private industry getting humans on Mars. Mars trips! Mars houses! Mars colonies! But no one’s going anywhere without the help of one brilliant, peculiar, fantastical space center—NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, which is behind almost every amazing feat in the history of space travel. By Jacqueline Detwiler.

Prediction: There will be a Comma Two. By Alex Roy.

When pilot Viktor Belenko defected, he did so in a mysterious Soviet plane – the MiG-25. Stephen Dowling looks at its far-reaching impact.

A special issue explores how the research enterprise keeps early-career scientists from pursuing the most important work, and what can be done to help.

If the trip doesn’t kill you, living there might. By Joel Achenbach.

The bottom of the ocean is the most remote place on Earth, but that isn’t stopping us from mining it. By Brooke Jarvis.

A small group of giant companies—some old, some new—are once again dominating the global economy, says Adrian Wooldridge. Is that a good or a bad thing?

Team Rubicon began in 2010 with a unique dual mission: providing disaster relief and giving struggling American veterans a vital sense of purpose. The program has a reputation for ignoring best practices and obliterating red tape, and it has already disrupted the aid industry. Now founder Jake Wood wants to take on the Red Cross. By Kyle Dickman.

Practice is important for talent. But, is that all it takes to become an expert? By D. Zachary Hambrick and Fredrik Ullén.

The editor asked for my thoughts on the idea that the ‘shipping cycle’ might become a thing of the past, thanks to improvements in our ability to process data. My mind went back to 1979, when the idea of ‘research’ into shipping supply and demand was still relatively new.... By Andrew Craig Bennett.

The slaves who built the White House got no pay—but their owners got up to $60 a year. So here’s what America really owes the builders’ descendants. By Michael Daly.

“The officers made their way down to the pair of moonshiners and went through the typical rigmarole of an arrest, everything they’d been taught. But before they started busting up the still with the axes they’d brought along, Rusty Hanna said something that caused all parties to freeze: ‘Now we’re gonna cook some whiskey.’” By Phil McCausland.

Gritty photos capture the women who stepped in to mobilize the American war effort. By Alex Q. Arbuckle.

“Pretty much every job there—from sweeping the floor all the way up to installing the soundboard or performing final tone regulation—requires attention to detail.” Photography by Christopher Payne, story by Jordan G. Teicher.

A Mississippi project, a centerpiece of President Obama’s climate plan, has been plagued by problems that managers tried to conceal, and by cost overruns and questions of who will pay. By Ian Urbina.

Antarctica is home to one of the most unforgiving climates on the planet, but the fossils here could tell an important story. By Nathaniel Scharping. (May 11, 2016)

Among the institution’s earliest employees were female “computers” whose calculations made the first rocket launches possible. By Nathalia Holt.

Four extraordinary women make up half of NASA’s most recent astronaut class—and they may go to Mars. By Steven Devadanam.

Cattle rustling, signature crime of the Old West, has returned to Texas. By Matt Wolfe.