First up, the closest view yet of Pluto’s biggest moon, Charon. The scientific team was surprised by the relatively smooth surface of the moon—they were expecting many more craters to dot its surface. Charon’s sleek exterior suggests that it has been recently geologically active. The dark region up top (which the crew has informally dubbed “Mordor”) shows several bright spots, suggesting that it is perhaps a region coated with a thin layer of some dark material. And on the upper right-hand side of Charon, that long notch is actually a canyon 4 to 6 miles deep.

NASA astrophysicist Amber Straughn, who’s appearing in the 2015 World Science Festival program “Cool Jobs,” is working on the next big thing in space science: the James Webb Space Telescope. Her workday is all about tackling big questions about galaxies, black holes, star formation, and other cosmic conundrums. She was also kind enough to answer some questions from us about life as an astrophysicist.

Seven days, lots of science in the news. And many of this week’s most notable and quotable items tie directly to our 2015 festival programs. So we’re linking the two because, well, we’re on the cutting edge of science. Scientists have identified the first warm-blooded fish. [Related: The Great Fish Count, 5/30] According to new analysis, most galaxies are strangled to death, as the their fuel supply of hydrogen and helium is slowly choked off. [Related: Astronomer’s Apprentice, 5/30] Scientists have managed to reverse engineer chicken beaks into dinosaur-like snouts, which could lead to reversing the evolution of birds. [Related: Planet of the Humans, 5/29] Scientists examined over 300 animal mummies at British museums and found that about a third of them had no body inside. [Related: Museum Scientist’s Apprentice, 5/30] New underwater robots are able to plan their own missions without human support. [Related: Roboticist’s Apprentice, 5/30] New research indicates that sea levels have risen faster over the last 20 years. Earlier findings had suggested the rate of increase was slowing. [Related: Scientific Sails: Under the Sun, 5/30] Robot pets could soon replace Fido and Fluffy, according to an animal welfare researcher. [Related: Dog Behaviorist’s Apprentice, 5/30] IBM CEO Ginni Rometty predicted that “in …

The price tag of the first nuclear weapon was a mere four years, 130,000 people, and $26 billion (in 2014 dollars). But what did the U.S. buy with those resources, other than the Fat Man and the Little Boy? A transformed world. Since the Manhattan Project folded in 1947, only a few other projects can arguably have said to truly match the scale and success of America’s drive to make a nuclear weapon. The Apollo program and the decoding of the human genome are two worth consideration—and both have a heritage that can be traced back to the Project itself. Was the Manhattan Project the greatest ad hoc scientific collaboration of all time? And more importantly, could we follow the Project’s model to tackle daunting modern super-problems like climate change?

At the 2014 World Science Festival, WNYC radio journalist John Hockenberry compared searching for alien life to searching for and settling into a new home: You need a real estate agent (an astronomer to find the right planet), an interior decorator (a planetary scientist to assess whether the environment is hospitable to life), a chef to check if there are the right ingredients in the kitchen (a biochemist), and an accountant to juggle all the numbers and make sure you’re looking in the right neighborhood (a physicist or computer scientist). Thankfully, the Festival panel Alien Life: Will We Know It When We See It? had all those essential ingredients in place: Harvard astronomer Dimitar Sasselov, MIT planetary scientist Sara Seager, Howard Hughes Medical Institute geneticist and biochemist Jack Szostak, and Arizona State University physicist Paul Davies. Hockenberry, who moderated the panel, asked the team to rate just how close we might be to discovering extraterrestrials.