A NASA spacecraft has smashed into an asteroid as part of a mission to protect Earth. The asteroid called by the name “Dimorphos” was smashed by an unnamed rocket launched by NASA. The asteroid, Dimorphos was smashed just as an example of how the Planet Earth can be saved when real big asteroids come towards the earth. Dimorphos was 560ft wide. Dimorphos was no real threat to the earth but was a part of an experiment.

The U.S. space agency will launch a spacecraft next month on a mission to slam into an asteroid in October, and scientists are hopeful the impact will create a small crater that could help them learn how to better defend against future threats.

Welcome to Edition 5.11 of the Rocket Report! Apologies for the lack of a report last week, but I was on assignment with the crew of the forthcoming Polaris Dawn mission. The upside is that this week's edition is extra-long—running to 2,500 words.

NASA has spotted a newly birthed island out in the Pacific Ocean. The island is the result of a series of eruptions from a volcano situated in the Home Reef, a seamount in the Central Tonga Islands. NASA says the seamount repeatedly oozed lava and ejected plumes of ash and smoke starting on September 10. Eleven hours after the eruptions began, though, the space agency began to notice the new island.

Once in Earth’s orbit, you’re about 95 percent of the way to anywhere else in the solar system. But as with anything, that last 5 percent is an enormous challenge. To fill the gap, in today’s “New Space” era, engineers are dusting off a decidedly old-space idea: Nuclear Rockets. Indeed, Nuclear Thermal Propulsion offers a compelling means of making travel to Mars and other far-flung destinations faster, cheaper, and safer.

When NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) slams into the tiny asteroid Dimorphos, it will be our first attempt to demonstrate our ability to deflect dangerous incoming asteroids.

PARIS — Hotel giant Hilton has signed on to design astronaut facilities for the private space station Starlab, currently under development by Voyager Space Holdings and Lockheed Martin, the companies told CNBC on Monday.

Vast Space, a Southern California startup founded by cryptocurrency billionaire Jed McCaleb, plans to establish an artificial-gravity space station in low Earth orbit. McCaleb envisions a future where millions of people are living throughout the solar system. Since other companies are helping to reduce launch costs, McCaleb thinks the next important step will be creating large structures where people can live and work in space.

The NASA associate administrator responsible for the agency’s science programs will resign by the end of the year after more than six years on the job. NASA announced Sept. 13 that Thomas Zurbuchen would step down as associate administrator for science at the end of the year. He had served in that role since October 2016.

After two failed attempts to launch its mega Moon rocket, NASA is planning for a third go at its inaugural Artemis mission. The space agency is now hoping to test the rocket on September 21 and finally launch it to space six days later, with a backup opportunity in early October. That is, if Space Force agrees.

NASA needs to fix a hydrogen leak, ace a fueling test and secure a critical safety system waiver to even try to launch this month.

NASA has once again waved off an attempt to launch its massive new moon rocket on an uncrewed test mission because of technical issues. The scrub was called at 11:17 a.m. ET, three hours before the beginning of the launch window.

SpaceX's partnership with NASA just got $1.4 billion sweeter, as the space agency announced Wednesday that it's extending its deal with the company to cover five additional missions.

When NASA's robotic Perseverance rover blasted off to Mars last year, it brought with it a small, golden box called MOXIE, for the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment. Since then, MOXIE has been making oxygen out of thin Martian air.

Humans haven’t set foot on the moon in more than a half century, but NASA’s Artemis program is going to send them back with a series of missions beginning in early September. When the first astronaut plants her boots in the lunar soil in 2025 as part of Artemis III, assuming the current schedule holds, it will be the start of an even more ambitious project than sending humans back to the moon: NASA plans to construct a base camp somewhere among the gray dust and craggy rocks of the moon’s south pole.

Space tourism is no longer the stuff of science fiction — it’s just around the corner. Aside from private missions to space, like Inspiration4 and DearMoon, in which members of the general public will spend a few days in a SpaceX vehicle circling the Earth and moon, respectively, there are also a few space hotels...

In his new book, “The Crux”, Richard Rumelt, a professor of business strategy, writes about a conversation he once had with an air-force colonel. What, Mr Rumelt asked, is the perfect fighter jet? The colonel replied: “The perfect design would have contractors in each state and a part made in each congressional district.” The tale is told after Mr Rumelt has described the waste and incoherence of nasa’s Space Shuttle programme—something he blames squarely on Congress.

Nearly 50 years after the final Apollo mission visited the lunar surface, NASA has launched a program that aims to put people back to the moon on the surface of Mars and other uncharted lunar regions: It all starts with rocket Artemis I.

Next week's moon launch is just the beginning. As the world counts down to the planned Aug. 29 liftoff of the Artemis 1 mission, which will use a Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket to send an uncrewed Orion spacecraft around the moon, NASA and its international partners are already planning for the future.

The sun is ramping up for Solar Cycle 25's solar maximum at a faster rate than previously expected, which could have knock-on effects on future space missions, experts say.