Researchers tapped by NASA just conducted a first test of a decades-old concept.

Elon Musk wants to build a city on Mars, but Werner Herzog says the plan is unequivocally a "mistake." SpaceX CEO Musk has a plan to send the first humans to Mars in the mid-2020s, using the under-development Starship rocket. Once they get there, Musk wants to build out a self-sustaining, million-strong city on Mars by 2050.

WHEN ROBYN GATENS was hired by NASA in 1985, the agency had just announced plans for a space station called Freedom, and the young chemical engineer had been tapped to help solve one of its biggest technological challenges. NASA engineers had plenty of experience keeping astronauts alive in space for a few days or weeks at a time, but the new space station was meant to be permanently occupied.

Earlier this week, Elon Musk said there’s a “good chance” settlers in the first Mars missions will die. And while that’s easy to imagine, he and others are working hard to plan and minimize the risk of death by hardship or accident. In fact, the goal is to have people comfortably die on Mars after a long life of work and play that, we hope, looks at least a little like life on Earth.

NASA's new Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket and associated ground infrastructure have soared past original cost estimates to a degree that requires the agency to notify Congress about the ballooning budget. The recently appointed leader of NASA's human spaceflight efforts, Kathy Lueders, announced the new cost estimates in a blog post published on Aug. 27.

Astra's first orbital mission got off the ground, but it soon came back down again. The California-based spaceflight startup launched its first orbital test flight tonight (Sept. 11), sending its two-stage Rocket 3.1 skyward from the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Alaska at 11:20 p.m. EDT (7:20 p.m. local Alaska time and 0320 GMT on Sept. 12). The 38-foot-tall (12 meters) booster, which was carrying no payloads, didn't make it all the way to the final frontier.

Mars Science City is planned for the desert outside Dubai, intended as a space to develop technology to colonize Mars.

China is building a floating spaceport from which it can launch rockets from the Pacific Ocean. The “Eastern Aerospace Port” off the coast of Haiyang city in the province of Shandong will also be used the building and maintenance of small rockets. It’s being developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC), the nation’s biggest defense contractor, Universe Today reports.

Are we here to re-create ourselves as robotic humanoids? In a recent podcast, Robert J. Marks discusses what robots can do for us with retired internist and author Geoffrey Simmons. In his most recent book, Are We Here to Re-Create Ourselves?: The Convergence of Designs (2019), Simmons argues that in creating artificially intelligent robots, we are trying to recreate the human being. But can we really recreate everything about ourselves? For example, they discussed, can robots be counselors? Should robots go into space instead of humans?

While on Earth, satellites are kept in immaculate cleanrooms to protect their instruments from harmful dust particles. If those instruments fail to function properly in space, however, it could be because of particle contamination during launch. Now a British company has developed a device to identify whether this is the case.

NASA is definitely targeting the moon's south pole for a crewed landing in 2024 — but that timeline will be difficult to achieve if Congress doesn't open its purse strings, and fast, agency chief Jim Bridenstine said. During a presentation with NASA's Lunar Exploration Analysis Group last Monday (Sept. 14), Bridenstine seemed to suggest that the agency is open to a more equatorial site for the 2024 touchdown, a key milestone in NASA's Artemis program of crewed lunar exploration.

Blue Origin, the private aerospace manufacturer founded by Amazon chief Jeff Bezos, will be launching its first mission for 2020 - a suborbital mission with its reusable New Shepard rocket that will test critical parts of its human landing system (HLS) to be used in the Artemis flight in 2024. The upcoming flight will be the first for Blue Origin this 2020, marking the 13th launch for the New Shepard project. It follows the twelfth New Shepard flight last December 11, 2019.

An important piece of SpaceX's new Starship megarocket just got its first workout. The first vacuum Raptor — the in-space version of Starship's Raptor engine — blazed up in a debut test at SpaceX's development facility in McGregor, Texas, company representatives announced via Twitter last night (Sept. 24).

U.S. Space Force has announced that it will launch two GPS satellites on a used Falcon-9 rocket next year. It is the first such decision from the Space Force.Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, just signed a contract modification with the U.S. Space Force. This grants permission to use Falcon 9 Boosters with preflown first stages for the upcoming GPS satellite launches.

If NASA is going to have a long-term presence on the Moon, it’s going to need an alternative to typical solar power — lunar nights can last for over two weeks in some cases. And the agency is turning to outsiders for help. It’s partnering with HeroX on a “Watts on the Moon” crowdsourcing challenge that offers up to $5 million in total prizes if you can create energy solutions for Moon missions. The frontrunners won’t even have to wait until the technology is approved before it goes on a lunar trip.

NASA needs to have a new lunar lander and giant rocket ready by next year in order to return astronauts to the moon by 2024, the space agency's chief Jim Bridenstine told Congress Wednesday (Sept. 23). In a Senate appropriations committee hearing, Bridenstine said NASA aims to send an uncrewed mission, called Artemis 1, around the moon in November 2021 to prepare for the first orbital mission with astronauts two years later, Artemis 2. The Artemis 3 mission would follow, sending astronauts to the south pole of the moon in 2024.

European space officials will this week unveil detailed plans for a series of ambitious missions aimed at returning humans to the moon in the next few years. Projects will include construction of crew quarters for an orbiting lunar space station, making the power and propulsion units for America’s Orion spacecraft, and designing and building a sophisticated communication and refuelling unit, known as Esprit, to serve astronauts on the lunar surface. These missions will be carried out jointly with Nasa and the Japanese and Canadian space agencies.

The commander of Boeing’s first astronaut flight has pulled himself off the crew so he’s on Earth — not at the International Space Station — for his daughter’s wedding next year. It’s the second crew switch for Boeing’s Starliner capsule, grounded until the end of this year or early next because of software problems encountered during the first test flight last December.

SpaceX is almost ready to start building a permanent human settlement on Mars with its massive Starship rocket. The private spaceflight company is on track to launch its first uncrewed mission to Mars in as little as four years from now, SpaceX's founder and CEO Elon Musk said Friday (Oct. 16) at the International Mars Society Convention.

A NASA spacecraft touched down on the rugged surface of the Bennu asteroid on Tuesday, grabbing a sample of rocks dating back to the birth of the solar system to bring home.