Nathan Rott

Firefighters working on the nation's largest current wildfire, burning in southern Utah, are being challenged by historic weather conditions. Extreme wildfire behavior is expected to continue through the weekend.

A valuable NASA satellite observatory is falling to Earth faster than scientists expected. It's called the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, or "Swift" for short, and it can respond to celestial events much faster than its sky-gazing counterparts. To save Swift and test out a first-of-its-kind technology, NASA partnered with an Arizona-based startup to launch a refrigerator-sized robot, aptly named Link, into lower Earth orbit. That's on its way right now to meet up with Swift to give it a boost.

A new study looks at a specific subset of insects called parasitoid wasps and estimates the number of insect species on the entire planet.

Species in the genus Heliconius live much longer than other butterfly species. Ger Bosma/Getty Images hide caption

Why did designing the World Cup pitches take eight years? Spain's Mikel Oyarzabal scores the opening goal from the penalty kick during the

Transcript ANNOUNCER: You're listening to Short Wave from NPR. NATE ROTT: Short Wavers, maybe Tall Wavers-- I don't know who you are.

An unprecedented rescue mission is underway to save a valuable space observatory before it burns up in Earth's atmosphere.

As of July 13, 2026, the CDC has confirmed at least 1,645 cases of cyclosporiasis, an intestinal illness linked to produce. There are 1000s more unverified cases.

Transcript NATHAN ROTT: Hey, Nate Rott here with an ask for you casual listeners out there. Can we invest more in this friendship?