It was an event to commemorate Apollo 8’s breakthrough half a century ago—the first time humans had escaped the Earth’s gravitational pull to orbit the moon, by far the furthest travel from the planet. But NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine wanted to talk about the future. “We’re talking about the Apollo era with an eye for the future,” he said at the sold-out Smithsonian event held at the Washington National Cathedral Dec. 11.

NASA’s new initiative to go back to the moon at the behest of President Donald Trump is an intriguing notion, but for now, we’re still relegated to studying and exploring the lunar surface with the help of robots. But it’s not NASA’s robots we ought to be paying attention to—there aren’t any. Instead, China currently has the leg-up in lunar exploration, and it’s poised to make a splash with its Chang’e 4 spacecraft, launched last Saturday.

Nasa detects ice retreat probably linked to ocean changes in region once thought stable

Just weeks after making the closest ever flyby of the Sun, Nasa's Parker Solar Probe is sending back its data. Included in the observations is this remarkable image of the energetic gas, or plasma, flowing out from the star. The bright dot is actually Mercury. The black dots are repeats of the little world that occur simply because of the way the picture is constructed.

Weeks after Parker Solar Probe made the closest-ever approach to a star, the science data from the first solar encounter is just making its way into the hands of the mission's scientists. It's a moment many in the field have been anticipating for years, thinking about what they'll do with such never-before-seen data, which has the potential to shed new light on the physics of our star, the Sun.

NASA has confirmed that Voyager 2 has joined its twin to become only the second spacecraft to enter interstellar space – where the Sun’s flow of material and magnetic field no longer affect its surroundings. The slightly faster Voyager 1 entered interstellar space in August 2012. Voyager 2 is about 18 billion kilometres from Earth and still sending back data that are picked up by radio telescopes in Australia.

For the second time in history, a human-made object has reached the space between the stars. NASA’s Voyager 2 probe now has exited the heliosphere – the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the Sun.

Voyager 2, a space probe launched in 1977, becomes only the second human-made object to enter the space between the stars.

Today -- Dec. 8, 2018 -- marks a big anniversary in SpaceX history. It's been more than 12 years since SpaceX launched its first rocket, an experimental Falcon 1, from Kwajalein Atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to ensure it wouldn't hurt anyone if it blew up. (Spoiler: It blew up). It would be two more years before SpaceX succeeded in getting a rocket into orbit, and two more years after that before SpaceX built a rocket big enough to carry significant commercial payloads.

Spacewalking astronauts sliced through thick insulation on a capsule docked to the International space station on Tuesday, trying to find clues to a mysterious drilled hole that leaked precious cabin air four months ago. The space station’s crew patched the small hole in the Soyuz capsule last August, mistreatment epoxy and gauze. Russian space officials wanted the site surveyed from the outside, before the capsule’s return to Earth next week with Russian Sergei Prokopyev and 2 others.

Nasa has spotted a strange, shiny object lying on the Martian surface. The planet is largely red, dusty and bland, meaning that anything unusual stands out. The latest discovery is one such object: a shiny lump that is visible on the surface. Now the team behind the Curiosity rover intends to have a proper look at the object, in the hope of finding out what it is. Though they have their suspicions, they are ready to be surprised.

Russian entrepreneur and physicist Yuri Milner wants to send a probe back to Saturn's ocean moon Enceladus, to search for evidence of life there. NASA wants to help him.

On Monday afternoon, NASA’s InSight spacecraft will try to land on Mars.

Today NASA will attempt its eighth successful landing of a robot on the red planet by venturing to place its InSight lander—a spacecraft almost 10 years and nearly one billion dollars in the making—as gently as possible on the vast planes of Mars' Elysium Planitia.

When it comes to events in space, 2019 is going to be an extraordinary year. That’s not to say 2018 will be an easy act to follow. After all, SpaceX debuted the world’s most powerful operational launch system (called Falcon Heavy), sent a car beyond Mars, and helped lift off more orbital rockets than in any year since 1990.

Nine companies will vie for a share of more than $2 billion dollars to build small landers to carry experimental payloads to the lunar surface.

Using an AI design process, engineers at software company Autodesk and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory came up with a new interplanetary lander concept that could explore distant moons like Europa and Enceladus. Its slim design weighs less than most of the landers that NASA has already sent to other planets and moons.

If NASA's stunning landing of a car-sized robot on Mars didn't already whet your appetite for space exploration this week, mark your calendar for 2 p.m. EST on Thursday. That's when NASA plans to give an update about a program that aims to land privately developed spacecraft on the moon. "We are announcing new moon partnerships with American companies," Jim Bridenstine, NASA's administrator, tweeted on Tuesday. "The US is returning to the surface of the moon, and we're doing it sooner than you think!"

NASA just announced it has heard the first-ever “sounds” of wind on Mars. But if you’re expecting howling, swooshes and crackles, you’re in for a surprise. These are vibrations, captured by NASA’s InSight lander, which touched down on the Red Planet just last week. The craft will stay put until November 24, 2020, measuring quakes that happen anywhere on Mars.

After suffering a couple technical glitches that have put NASA's Curiosity rover off its duties on Mars this year, the robotic explorer seems to be back in full health, having driven to a new site and drilled a sampling hole, according to NASA statements. That hole is its 18th successful drilling assignment, according to NASA. It targeted a type of rock geologists with the mission have been eyeing for more than a month, but failed to successfully drill at a previous site. The drill was out of commission between late 2016 and this May as engineers addressed a problem with the instrument.

In a remote area of northwest Greenland, an international team of scientists has made a stunning discovery, buried beneath a kilometer of ice.

Remembers Windows 95? Maybe they'll find the ghost of Clippy on the International Space Station, too.

NASA’s spacecraft OSIRIS-REx has finally reached the asteroid 101955 Bennu – which may be on collision course with the Earth – after travelling for just over two years since its launch in September 2016. This mission, which will bring grains back for us to study on Earth, is latest to return asteroid samples to Earth after the Japanese Space Agency’s missions Hayabusa 1 and 2 and StarDust. The data will help unveil more about the origins of the solar system and how to protect the Earth from possible asteroid impact.

If you’ve ever worked in IT, you know that most problems require eye-rollingly simple solutions. One, check that the device is plugged in. Two, turn the device off and back on again. Three, wiggle some things around. It appears that such thinking will fix the Hubble Space Telescope, which entered a safe mode two weeks ago after a gyroscope failure.

Somewhere inside America’s sprawling space apparatus, a newly assembled team of NASA engineers has begun designing a spacecraft to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon. It would be humanity’s first visit since the glory days of the 1960s. The Lander Study Group, as it’s called inside NASA, put its very first ideas on paper within the past few weeks—that's according to a NASA presentation seen by Popular Mechanics. What’s most exciting about this nascent work is that the new lunar lander won’t be a one-and-done like that of Apollo 11. This 21st century lander will make a round trip.

Looking around at Earth's neighbors, it's fair to say we're on the most livable planet in our solar system. (Lift your game, Mars.) But while Earth seems unique in being able to support life, it's probably not the only planet in the universe with that distinction. There are other planets, known as exoplanets, which are rocky orbs like ours and which orbit their own stars in other solar systems. If those planets exist in the so-called Goldilocks zone -- the orbital distance around their star that makes them not too hot and not too cold...

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope returned to normal operations late Friday, Oct. 26, and completed its first science observations on Saturday, Oct. 27 at 2:10 AM EDT.

Rocket scientists tell Nasa a new rover could finally unlock red planet’s secrets

NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which launched earlier this year, has set a new record for becoming the closest human-made object to the Sun, the US space agency announced Monday.

Collection comes as space agency suggests that brands could feature on the side of its rockets

One of the International Space Station’s computers has malfunctioned, Russia’s space agency has announced. Roscosmos said one of three computers in the station’s Russian module has failed. It said Russian flight controllers plan to reboot it on Thursday ahead of the arrival of a spaceship called Progress later this month.

After four years aboard the International Space Station (ISS), NASA has confirmed it’s mission complete for phase I and II of the Made In Space operated “3D Printing in Zero G Technology Demonstration.” The findings of this mission, accepted October 2018, were used in development of the Made In Space Additive Manufacturing Facility (AMF) which has been operating aboard the ISS since 2015. With this facility, and the early stage data...

NASA has certified SpaceX’s Falcon 9 (likely F9 v1.2) to launch the space agency’s most valuable and critical scientific spacecraft, opening up the floor for SpaceX to routinely compete for missions comparable to Hubble Space Telescope, the Curiosity Mars rover (Mars Science Laboratory), Cassini (a Saturn orbiter), and James Webb Space Telescope, among many others.

Nasa says it is going back to the Moon – and this time it's going to stay there. As well as setting up base there, Nasa hopes to use the Moon as a way to launch future missions to Mars and beyond, it said. After laying out the success it has already had, the space agency says that it is "returning to the moon – to stay". After that it will "go beyond, to Mars".