In early September, the island nation of Japan was doing Japan things. One day, Typhoon Jebi roared ashore near Osaka and Kobe, breaking historical wind records. Early the next morning in Tokyo, as thick clouds from Jebi’s outer bands raced overhead, an offshore earthquake rattled softly but perceptibly through the city. The capital city’s skies remained a bleak gray a few hours later as we entered the headquarters of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in the city’s bustling Shinagawa area.

Europe and Russia's ExoMars rover has been assigned its destination on the Red Planet. The robot explorer will almost certainly land on Oxia Planum -- a site rich in iron-magnesium clays near the equator -- say scientists from the Landing Site Selection Working Group (LSSWG) in Leicester, UK. They've been discussing touchdown options for around four years and -- with the blessings of the European and Russian space agencies...

When the first humans go to Mars, they may want to bring lichens with them. Because lichens are mini-ecosystems made of both fungi and algae or bacteria, they are particularly good at surviving the extreme conditions on Mars, and could even be used to produce rocket fuel in space.

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.

The Altai mountain region of Central Asia is a rugged and remote place. Right in the center of the continental landmass, it forms a crossroads between the Kazakh steppes, the snow forests of Siberia and the arid plains of Mongolia. It’s a landscape of granite, forced up by the inch-a-year collision of the Indian tectonic plate with Asia, then carved out over millions of years by streams of snowmelt. Siberian Ibex wander here, along with musk deer feeding on the lichenous rocks and brown bears that follow the retreating snow fields in spring.

China unveiled on Tuesday a replica of its first permanently crewed space station, which would replace the international community's orbiting laboratory and symbolises the country's major ambitions beyond Earth. The 17-metre (55-foot) core module was a star attraction at the biennial Airshow China in the southern coastal city of Zhuhai, the country's main aerospace industry exhibition.

When the Falcon Heavy rocket launched for the first time in February, some critics of the company wondered what exactly the rocket's purpose was. After all, the company's Falcon 9 rocket had become powerful enough that it could satisfy the needs of most commercial customers. One such critic even told me, "The Falcon Heavy is just a vanity project for Elon Musk."

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has once again entered a safe mode as the aging spacecraft appears to be running out of fuel. In a brief statement Oct. 23, NASA said that, during a routine communications session on Oct. 19, controllers found that the spacecraft had entered a “no-fuel-use sleep mode” that disrupted operations. “The Kepler team is currently assessing the cause and evaluating possible next steps,” the agency stated.

Mystery continues to swirl around a hole found in the outside of the International Space Station. Last week, Nasa and the Russian space agency scrambled to fix a leak in the floating laboratory that was causing air to slowly rush out of the space station. The crew on board eventually plugged up the gap with epoxy, fixing the problem at least temporarily.

Unwilling to go quietly into that good night, the Kepler Space Telescope is once again gathering scientific data—despite a malfunctioning thruster and painfully low levels of fuel. With the $600 million Kepler Space Telescope high atop our dead pool lists, this brief report published yesterday by NASA comes as a rather pleasant and unexpected surprise...

Speaking on a panel titled “Future of Space” at a 2018 conference for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) 60th anniversary, SpaceX COO and President Gwynne Shotwell reportedly confirmed that SpaceX is still targeting integrated BFR tests in 2019, in the form of hops with the next-gen rocket’s upper stage (known as BFS).

According to two recently deleted job postings on the internet, where nothing can ever really be deleted, Amazon Web Services is hiring technical engineers to develop cloud services for satellites and “space-based systems.” TJI Research spotted the listings, which called for a software engineer and product manager to “to help innovate and disrupt the launch, satellite and space world with new AWS products, services and features,” according to one of the job ads, for “a new AWS service that will have a historic impact.”

SpaceX has signed its first customer to fly on the company’s huge new rocket, the BFR, the company says. The passenger will fly on the monster ship around the Moon, though there are no details yet regarding when the trip will happen. SpaceX says it will announce who is flying — and why — on Monday, September 17th. The BFR, or the Big Falcon Rocket, is the giant rocket that SpaceX is currently developing to send humans to the Moon and Mars. The BFR design, presentated by CEO Elon Musk last year, consists of a combined rocket and spaceship, called the BFS for Big Falcon Spaceship.

Everyone's talking about the Moon. It'll be 50 years this Christmas since Apollo 8 first flew to the Moon – with the crew taking the famous Earthrise photos – and we're close to the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11's first moon landing and moonwalk for Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Can we go back? Should we go back? NASA knows we probably have to go back, if only to use the Moon as an off-Earth stepping stone to enable deeper solar system exploration missions, so it's spent years trying to create a nuclear reactor that can be operated there.

SpaceX revealed Monday that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa will be its first space tourist. Maezawa has chartered a flight aboard the company's Big Falcon Rocket, which is still being developed, for a slingshot trip around the Moon as soon as 2023. He's planning to take six to eight artists with him on the mission free of charge.

On a Monday night filled with emotion as much as engineering, one of the most poignant moments came toward the end of the program at SpaceX's rocket factory in California. The company's founder, Elon Musk, choked up as he described the financial contribution from a Japanese businessman, Yusaku Maezawa, to his Big Falcon Rocket project. "I’ll tell you, it’s done a lot to restore my faith in humanity," Musk said, seated in front of the end of a Falcon 9 rocket and its nine engines.

SpaceX chief Elon Musk has tweeted two photos that give us a peek into the company's Martian dreams. One of the images shows the BFR, the massive rocket SpaceX is developing for deep space missions, while the other shows the BFR and what he called "Mars Base Alpha." It's no secret that the private space corporation wants to build a human settlement on the red planet. Back in 2017, it announced its plans to launch two BFR cargo missions to Mars by 2022 to prepare for the arrival of the first Martian settlers by 2024. Before any of that can happen, though, SpaceX has to be able to start testing its BFR system in the first half of 2019.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station will conduct a spacewalk next month to learn more about a pressure leak discovered in August that has resulted in a mild international incident between the United States and Russia. On Wednesday, NASA released a carefully worded statement sharing news of the November spacewalk — no date has been announced — that adds color to previous statements made by Dmitry Rogozin, director general of Russian space agency ROSCOSMOS. Rogozin has indicated that a small hole in the space station was not a manufacturing defect.

NASA has announced the first crewed flight by a SpaceX rocket to the International Space Station (ISS) is expected to take place in June 2019. It will be the first manned US launch to the orbiting research laboratory since the space shuttle program was retired in 2011, forcing US astronauts to hitch costly rides aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

The NASA Office of the Inspector General released a scathing audit of Boeing and the space agency Wednesday morning, detailing Boeing’s delays and billions of dollars of cost overruns in building key components of a next-generation rocket destined for missions to the moon and Mars. The report also accused NASA of being overly generous with its evaluations of Boeing, leading to questionable payments.

NASA is considering a spectacular airship concept for Venus exploration. The space agency’s Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate (SACD) has posted potential designs of the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) on its website. The airships have even been compared to a “cloud city” by Space.com.

NASA’s next Mars rover — the first to gather rock samples meant to come back to Earth — should dream big and visit as many places on the red planet as possible, scientists concluded on 18 October. Its stops would probably include some combination of Jezero crater, once home to river deltas and a lake; Northeast Syrtis, which contains some of the most ancient rocks on Mars; and Midway, a compromise option located between those two. Project scientists have proposed visiting both Jezero...

ThumbSat aims to make access to space for the scientific community a much more affordable endeavor.

Spacewalks have become a regular feature of life in the International Space Station, but they are still a risky adventure. By Jason Caffrey.

For the second time in less than three years, a spacewalk outside of the International Space Station has been cut short because of a water leak in an astronaut's helmet. A spacewalk involving NASA astronaut Tim Kopra and British colleague Tim Peake was called off about 2 hours early today (Jan. 15) when Kopra noticed some water inside his helmet.

Astronaut ice cream — did it really fly? Vox's Phil Edwards investigates, with the help of the Smithsonian and an astronaut.

There are only few places in the world where rockets lift off. That short list will get a little longer on Tuesday, when Russia plans to open a new gleaming gateway to orbit. The Vostochny (Eastern) Cosmodrome should officially enter service with the launch of a Soyuz rocket scheduled for 10:01 p.m. EDT on April 26. The first mission from a brand new launch pad will deliver three satellites into the Earth's orbit—and it could deliver much more than that.

SpaceX has successfully landed another Falcon 9 rocket after launching the vehicle into space this evening from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Shortly after takeoff, the vehicle touched down at SpaceX’s Landing Complex 1 — a ground-based landing site that the company leases at the Cape. It marks the second time SpaceX has pulled off this type of ground landing, and the fifth time SpaceX has recovered one of its rockets post-launch. The feat was accomplished a few minutes before the rocket's second stage successfully put the company's Dragon spacecraft into orbit, where it will rendezvous with the International Space Station later this week.

NASA is working on sending a submarine into the depths of the Kraken Mare — the largest ocean on Saturn’s moon Titan. There are really two big reasons why we want to go to Titan. Number one: “to determine if hydrocarbon based life is possible on Titan,” said Jason Hartwig, a NASA cryogenics engineer, in a presentation at the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Symposium in Raleigh on Wednesday.

The so-called EmDrive creates thrust by bouncing microwaves around in an enclosed chamber, and uses only solar power - and now a Nasa lab is set to reveal its findings on the technology.

New results on the controversial, “impossible” EmDrive propulsion system could be soon published in a prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal, according to credible rumors. “It is my understanding that Eaglework’s new paper has been today accepted for publication in a peer-review journal, where it will be published,” said high-reputation poster José Rodal, Ph.D, on the NasaSpaceFlight forum, which is often the primary source of updates for all things EmDrive. “Congratulations to the Eagleworks team!” The poster added that the sources of the leak are not employed by NASA.

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos says the big, re-usable rocket he has been developing inside his Blue Origin space company will be called New Glenn, after John Glenn.

SpaceX’s recent Falcon 9 explosion seems to have been caused by a breach in the "cryogenic helium system" of the vehicle's upper oxygen tank, according to an update from the company. However, SpaceX says the accident is not connected to last year's Falcon 9 explosion, when a rocket disintegrated en route to the International Space Station. On September 1st, one of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets exploded on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida as the vehicle was being fueled in preparation for a static fire test.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk has outlined his highly ambitious vision for manned missions to Mars, which he said could begin as soon as 2022 – three years sooner than his previous estimates. However, the question of how such extravagantly expensive missions would be funded remains largely in the dark.

One of my earliest memories is sitting on my grandfather's shoulders, waving a flag as our astronauts returned to Hawaii. This was years before we'd set foot on the moon. Decades before we'd land a rover on Mars. A generation before photos from the International Space Station would show up in our social media feeds.