NASA gets all the glory when it comes to Martian exploration, but two other space agencies are now hoping to change that. Early next week, the European Space Agency and Roscosmos are launching the first phase of their joint ExoMars mission, a major new scientific effort with an badass goal: discovering signs of life on the Red Planet.
Commander Scott Kelly has just returned from his 340-day mission aboard the ISS. The record breaking mission has seen Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko spend almost a year in space, and scientists hope to gain an insight into what long stays in microgravity do to the body, with views on missions to Mars in the future.
Curiosity is busy poking and prodding the Bagnold Dunes, learning some new tricks in the first-ever interplanetary fieldwork on a sand dune. And of course it looks absolutely stunning while doing it in this latest sand dune selfie.
Friday’s launch of the New Shepard rocket in West Texas renewed the tired debate about whether Blue Origin or SpaceX has achieved more in the reusable spaceflight game.
Astronauts and NASA personnel look the future and where they think the space program will go next.
NASA hopes to launch a crewed mission to Mars by the 2030s.
This was a golden year for planetary exploration thanks to all of the NASA and European Space Agency missions that were planned and implemented decades ago. Not since Apollo and the epic space race of the Cold War has space featured so heavily in the public eye.
For decades, Alan Stern talked about how important it was to send a spacecraft to Pluto. Those speeches, given to any audience willing to lend an ear, helped build up support for a mission to what was once classified the ninth planet, maintain support once NASA agreed to fly a mission after previous efforts foundered, and to retain interest once New Horizons was on its long cruise to Pluto.
Dr Amitabha Ghosh, who has worked in multiple Mars missions of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) since the US launched the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft in 1996, believes that one day space travel will become "affordable".
Five possible space missions have been selected by NASA to receive preliminary funding, ahead of a possible launch as early as 2020. Each of the projects, chosen as part of NASA
As NASA seeks to reduce costs and extend the length and capabilities of ambitious new solar system science and exploration missions, alternative propulsion technologies may deliver the right mix of savings, safety and superior propulsive power to enrich a variety of next-generation journeys to worlds and destinations beyond Earth orbit.
First spectroscopic results from BOSS give the most detailed look yet at the time when dark energy turned on some six billion light years ago, as the expansion of the universe was slipping from the grasp of matter
