SpaceX’s Starship megarocket will start flying Mars missions just two years from now, if all goes according to plan. “These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars. If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years,”...

Boeing’s Starliner capsule just returned to Earth without astronauts, marking the beginning of a new set of investigations by NASA. Starliner left the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday evening (Sept. 6), then aced a landing in New Mexico just after midnight on Saturday (Sept. 7). The...

Starliner’s long space odyssey is over. The Boeing capsule, named Calypso, returned to Earth early this morning (Sept. 7), touching down in the New Mexico desert at 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT; 11:01 p.m. local time on Sept. 6). “Great landing of Calyspo!” NASA astronaut Suni Williams...

Blue Origin’s huge New Glenn rocket won’t debut next month after all. New Glenn, the company’s partially reusable new heavy lifter, had been scheduled to launch NASA’s twin ESCAPADE Mars probes from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida during an eight-day window that...

Boeing’s Starliner capsule is ready to come home at long last. The two NASA astronauts who rode Starliner to the International Space Station (ISS), Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, “have finished packing Starliner with cargo and configuring its cabin for return,” NASA officials...

China will send samples of bricks to its space station in the coming months to test their durability in extreme conditions and potential use in building moon bases. Samples of bricks made of varying compositions from lunar soil simulant will be launched to the Tiangong space station aboard the...

China’s mysterious space plane has returned to Earth after spending over 8 months in orbit. The reusable spacecraft landed at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in a remote section of northwest China on Friday (Sept. 6). It launched from the same site atop a Long March 2F rocket on Dec. 14...

An experimental NASA solar sail can be seen in the night sky as it orbits the Earth. NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) launched in April 2024 atop a Rocket Lab Electron rocket. The mission is designed to test solar sail technology to help NASA develop larger spacecraft in the...

The Senegalese Space Study Agency (ASES) has signed an agreement with the China National Space Administration (CNSA) to join the China-led International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). ASES director Maram Kaire signed the agreement with the CNSA chief engineer, Li Guoping, on September 5, 2024. This...