Things aren’t looking good for the $400 million Mars “Opportunity” Rover. A new blog post from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory reveals that they are still waiting for the device to phone home after it was engulfed in a sandstorm on the red planet. According to the post, the rover went dark on June 10 when the storm hit, the tumultuous weather conditions having blocked out the sun rays that power the machine.

Astronomers have just assembled one of the most comprehensive portraits yet of the universe’s evolutionary history.

We all might be anxiously awaiting the eventual launch of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope — which has been stuck in an endless series of delays thanks to the idiots at Northrop Grumman — but the trusty Hubble is still delivering some pretty fantastic views of the heavens. The telescope’s latest snapshot is a real doozy, and it’s going to make you feel like you barely even exist.

This maybe sound obvious, but you can’t charge your spacecraft with an extra long power cord — which is why batteries are clutch for space, powering everything from electric tools and spacesuits to satellites and planetary rovers. But sending a battery into the cosmos means more than just loading it onto a rocket: batteries must be built to withstand the extreme temperatures of the space environment, and they also have to be packaged so that they don’t harm any astronauts if they accidentally explode.

Such an instrument could allow researchers to look for extraterrestrial microbial life directly.

Mars is kind of a bummer: That place is a hotbed of dynamic dust storms that got so big in recent months that they encircled the entire planet. Those conditions, sure to be a challenge for future Mars colonies, are a buzzkill for NASA’s Opportunity Rover right now: A dust storm forced the droid, which has been roaming Mars for 14 years, to shut down in June, and it’s still turned off today.

US space agency Nasa has delayed its a mission to send a satellite closer to the Sun than any before. The Parker Solar Probe was set to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Saturday, but last-minute investigations have delayed it for 24 hours. It is now scheduled to blast off - on board the mammoth Delta-IV Heavy rocket - on Sunday morning.

High-fidelity simulators are key. By Loren Grush.

NASA solves a Mars mystery after analyzing a strange flake-like object.

The future of the space station is up in the air—or rather, a vacuum.

Targeted to launch in April 2019 aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Bob Behnken is from St. Ann, Missouri. He has a doctorate in engineering, is a flight test engineer, and Colonel in the Air Force. He joined the astronaut corps in 2000, and flew aboard space shuttle Endeavour twice – for the STS-123 and STS-130 missions, during which he performed six spacewalks, for a total of more than 37 hours.

Are we alone in the universe? What prerequisites are there for supporting life on another planet? Are there any other planets out there that fit the bill? We may now be closer to solving some of these puzzles thanks to a recent report published in “Science Advances”, in which a team of researchers have highlighted the conditions required for a similar phenomenon to take place on another planet.

NASA recently delivered $10 million in funding to Ad Astra Rocket Company of Texas for further development of its Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR), an electromagnetic thruster proficient of propelling a spaceship to Mars in just 39 days. NASA’s funding was part of the “12 Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnership.”

The $20 million Lunar X Prize was supposed to send startups into space. The cost turned out to be far higher than the reward—but the competitors were never really in it for the trophy.

You have to admit, there is something sweet and crisp in the air of a home that’s filled to the brim with flora and fauna. It’s clean, chemical free oxygen! And it’s the doing of all those lush, overgrown plants you’ve finally managed to keep alive. They’re pretty and functional—who knew?

Will the next wave of Silicon Valley innovations be space-driven? Panelists at the recent International Space Station R&D conference think so.

The drive to the little white dome on the northern slope of Mauna Loa is a bumpy one. Mauna Loa, the “Long Mountain,” is a colossal volcano that covers half of the island of Hawaii. The rocky terrain, rusty brown and deep red, crunches beneath car tires and jostles passengers. Up there, more than 8,000 feet above sea level and many miles away from the sounds of civilization, it doesn’t feel like Earth. It feels like another planet. Like Mars.

In 1986, the space shuttle Challenger stunned the nation when it broke apart 73 seconds into flight. This is the story of the soccer ball that survived -- and the family that sent it into space, twice.

The Kepler Space Telescope is almost out of fuel, which means its life is coming to an end, NASA announced today. The space agency says it put the planet-hunting spacecraft into a “hibernation” safe mode this past Monday, and that a plan to reactivate Kepler next month could burn out whatever fuel remains.

Over 40 years ago, a NASA mission may have accidentally destroyed what would have been the first discovery of organic molecules on Mars, according to a report from New Scientist.

The knuckle-biting story of the first lunar landing from the people who were there.

Big-data statistics have revealed, among other things, that our own solar system is kind of an oddball

For the past two years, the spacecraft has been taking photos of Jupiter. Here are the best shots. By Brian Resnick.

NASA's Juno spacecraft finds lightning on Jupiter is same as in Earth in some ways, opposite in others.

Nasa's Opportunity rover may be dead on Mars, engineers fear. The little robot has been travelling over the planet for the last 15 years, but has lost contact with its team on Earth. They fear that the rover might never wake back up, and its mission could come to an end. Opportunity ran into problems in recent days when a Martian storm that is covering a quarter of the planet swept over the rover. That blotted out the Sun's light, leaving it unable to charge its batteries.

Throughout the 20th century, NASA made extensive use of wind tunnels to test and refine designs for airplanes, spacecraft, and many other vehicles and structures.

Fifty years ago, 5 unmanned lunar orbiters circled the moon, taking extremely high resolution photos of the surface. They were trying to find the perfect landing site for the Apollo missions. They would be good enough to blow up to 40 x 54ft images that the astronauts would walk across looking for the great spot. After their use, the images were locked away from the public, as at the time they would have revealed the superior technology of the USA’s spy satellite cameras, which the orbiters cameras were designed from. Instead the images from that time were grainy and low resolution, made to be so by NASA.

Scientific American speaks with a crew member from a NASA simulation of a long-duration space mission

Scientists have found 12 new moons orbiting around Jupiter, in a breakthrough discovery about our mysterious neighbour. They include an object that scientists have referred to as an “oddball”. It is just one kilometre in size, and is flying in the opposite direction to many of the planet’s moons – and behaves in an entirely different way to any of the other 78 objects orbiting the planet. As such, it might be responsible for having smashed up many of the other objects that make up the moons around Jupiter.

We will 'need technologies well beyond our current grasp' if we plan to move to the red planet, a new study has found

Yes, we've yet to successfully send humans to Mars, but we already need to start thinking how we can stay there for long stretches of time -- or even for good. NASA launched the 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge back in 2015 to find a suitable artificial housing for the first wave of Martian residents, and now the agency has narrowed the contestants down to five after seeing the realistic virtual models they created. The agency and its project partner, Illinois' Bradley University, judged 18 teams' models created using a specialized software.

NASA is conducting studies on how to have sex in zero gravity.

Earlier this month, Vice President Mike Pence made NASA’s new goal clear: the space agency is tasked with sending humans to the surface of the Moon again, this time to create a foundation for deep space missions. Though it’s unclear exactly how the administration plans to pull this off, the new mission is a big change for NASA, which has been focused on going to Mars without a return to the lunar surface.

Uber has struck a deal with NASA to develop software for managing “flying taxi” routes in the air along the lines of ride-hailing services it has pioneered on the ground, the company said on Wednesday.

NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility will try again Sunday to launch a rocket carrying crucial cargo and science experiments to the International Space Station. The Antares rocket launch was originally scheduled for 7:37 a.m. Saturday. But it was scrubbed after NASA said an aircraft flew into the restricted area. The next launch effort is set for 7:14 a.m. Sunday.