NASA has successfully tested their first RS-25 rocket engine for the agency’s next heavy lift rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), for 500 seconds. The SLS, which will use 4 RS-25 engines in its core stage, is designed to take humans to deep space destinations like asteroids or Mars.

Europe and Russia have launched a joint mission to the Red Planet. The satellite, called the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), lifted off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan at 09:31 GMT. The probe will investigate whether the methane in the world's atmosphere is coming from a geological source or is being produced by microbes. If all goes well, the two space powers expect to follow up this venture with a rover, to be assembled in the UK...

Many scientists believe that eventually the Earth will die. When that happens, humanity will need to vacate and find a new home, possibly on Mars. Heather Hava, an aerospace engineering student at the University of Colorado Boulder, wants to make sure we have a way to grow food when we get there. The NASA fellow invented two robots that can grow fruits and vegetables and monitor human health in space. She won the $15,000 "Eat it!" Lemelson-MIT undergraduate prize, an award for the...

Mars One. The Mars Rover. Bruno Mars. Mars Bars. It's pretty clear we're OBSESSED with the idea of Mars, especially in regard to it being a potential colony for earthlings. But is that really the best option? Is there a better place for us to colonize in our solar system? Well, how about Venus? Sure the surface temperature is over 450 degrees Celsius, with crazy pressure, but there might be a smart way around that, making Venus a better option for long term colonization than Mars! How?

In the event of a catastrophe on the same scale as the astroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, mankind's best chance may lie in off world colonies. Due to its similarities to Earth, many scientists think Mars is a viable candidate for terraformation. We already know that the planet is within the habitable zone. So, what would it take to make it habitable? A 1000+ year planetary engineering project.

SpaceX has been teasing potential Mars plans for a while now, but the company just announced a launch date—and it’s soon. They plan to launch to the surface of Mars in 2018. Especially intriguing is that the announcement refers to the spacecraft as the “Red Dragon.” Does this mean that we’ll be seeing an update to the spacecraft so that it can handle the conditions of the red planet? We hope so.

Researchers just uncovered an incredible fact about liquid water on Mars. It’s not just flowing; it’s also boiling. And that discovery also solves one of the major mysteries about the surface of the red planet.

Budget earmarks are eating away at funding for advanced projects. Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in space exploration, in large part thanks to the idea of going to Mars. But a damning new report by Ars Technica reveals that legislators who don’t share that excitement have been working to defund NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, a program partly tasked with developing the technology needed to get to the Red Planet.

Before our species set foot on the moon, we orbited it first. The same will probably be true for Mars, and on Wednesday, Lockheed Martin plans to unveil its vision for a spacecraft that could make it happen. The "Mars Base Camp," as the company is calling it, would set up a laboratory, staffed by 6 astronauts, in Mars orbit in 2028. Up to now, NASA has outlined the first few steps to Mars. It's building a heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), and working with Lockheed to build...

When people think about rocket ships and space exploration, they often imagine traveling across the Milky Way, landing on mysterious planets and even meeting alien life forms. In reality, humans’ drive to get off Planet Earth has led to tremendous technological advances in our mundane daily lives — ones we use right here at home on terra firma.

The real thing will look nothing like 'The Martian,' says the book's author.

Had you searched the sky with a telescope just a few hundred thousand years ago, you would have struggled to find a red planet. Instead, you would have seen a gleaming-white ice ball where Mars should be. A team of astronomers led by Isaac Smith, an astrophysicist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, has collected the first concrete evidence that Mars has just exited an extreme ice age, one so intense it would have put Earth's recent frosty foray to shame.

There’s a long-standing joke that NASA is always 20 years from putting astronauts on Mars. Mission details shared at a recent summit shows that the space agency is right on schedule. A to-do list from 2015 looks remarkably similar to one compiled in 1990. One difference: NASA is now building a rocket and test-driving technologies needed to get a crew to Mars. But the specifics for the longest road trip in history — and what astronauts will do once they arrive — remain an open question.

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

Ever since Elon Musk founded a start-up space company 14 years ago, the goal has always been the same: Establishing a colony on Mars. Now he’s finally beginning to reveal how he plans to get there. Starting as soon as 2018, Musk’s SpaceX plans to fly an unmanned spacecraft to Mars. The unmanned flights would continue about every two years, timed for when Earth and Mars are closest in orbit, and, if everything goes according to plan, build toward the first human mission to Mars with the goal of landing in 2025, Musk has said.

As we get close to the end of September, when Elon Musk has promised to lay bare his plans for colonizing Mars at an international space conference, it seems like the ambitious founder of SpaceX can hardly contain his excitement. In an interview with The Washington Post, Musk gushed, “I’m so tempted to talk more about the details of it. But I have to restrain myself.” SpaceX fandom has speculated for years about details of Musk's ideas, which include the Mars Colonial Transporter concept. The Transporter likely consists of a large first stage rocket and...

Someone gave you a project to manage, but you don’t know where to start? No problem. You can get all the guidance you need from the movie, The Martian.

NASA is getting serious about recruiting, and to beef up its outreach efforts, has debuted some glorious graphics. With a style that's equal parts sci-fi throwback, Uncle Sam, and NASA at heart, they'd look great on a wall, earthbound or otherwise.

On Thursday, researchers announced that vegetables and cereals they spent two years growing in ‘Martian’ soil were found to be safe for human munching.