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Time is not a friend for the International Space Station. American efforts to extend its closing until 2030 possibly beyond are dependent upon evaluations of its continued safety and integrity. Materials in space age under the stresses of the space environment and deteriorate over time.

Tuesday, NASA administrator Bill Nelson announced that the space agency was creating a pair of new mission directorates to see it through the next two decades. The announcement separates NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate into the new Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD) and Space Operations Mission Directorate. According to Nelson, the changes are being made to accommodate increasing operations in low Earth orbit and the development of programs such as Artemis underway for deep space exploration.

NASA has announced that it will launch Psyche in August 2022 to reach the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. But there is something unique about this spacecraft—it will travel across space using a "solar electric propulsion" system.

We now know where NASA's first-ever robotic moon rover will touch down. The ice-hunting Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) will land just west of Nobile Crater, which sits near the moon's south pole, NASA officials announced today (Sept. 20). In late 2023, VIPER will fly to the moon aboard Griffin, a lander built by Pittsburgh-based company Astrobotic that will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

One of SpaceX's oldest rockets launched on a historic 10th flight, carrying the first stack of Starlink satellites into space in more than two months before sticking a landing at sea to cap the successful mission.

Four amateur astronauts have blasted off from Florida on their private mission to orbit. The Inspiration4 crew, comprising one billionaire and three "ordinary citizens", rode out of the Kennedy Space Center in a Dragon capsule provided by the SpaceX rocket company.

Space races are supposed to be won in engineering labs or up in orbit. Thanks to Jeff Bezos, the next one might be won in a courtroom or regulator’s office.

The first crewed mission to China's new space station is in the books. A spacecraft carrying Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo touched down safely in the Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia today (Sept. 17) at 1:34 a.m. EDT (0534 GMT; 1:34 p.m. Beijing time) today, bringing the historic Shenzhou 12 mission to an end.

Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide of JAXA and French astronaut Thomas Pesquet of ESA installed the mount for a solar array outside of the International Space Station during the first spacewalk to not include an American or Russian crew member.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is aiming to cement its position as a leading space enterprise with a mission this week that seeks to deliver four civilians to orbit for several days and then return them to Earth.

A recent Mars study discovered areas with lesser radiation for houses on mars, which is a major hazard to life, but is this enough to make life bearable there?

SpaceX's first all-civilian launch is scheduled to launch on Tuesday (Sept. 14) carrying a message of diversity during the third billionaire-led flight to launch in 2021. The mission, called Inspiration4, includes four private citizens who will fly on a Crew Dragon spacecraft for an Earth-orbiting mission.

Two cosmonauts completed the first in a series of spacewalks needed to outfit a newly-added Russian module to the International Space Station. Expedition 65 flight engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos on Friday (Sept. 2) connected power and data cables for the new multipurpose laboratory module (MLM), also referred to as "Nauka" (or "Science" in Russian).

Decades after launching the first artificial satellite into orbit, Beijing is strengthening its foothold in space. As per a new report, now China intends to construct megastructures in space that will span miles and may include solar power plants, tourism complexes and gas stations.

Publicly NASA is still holding onto the possibility of a 2021 launch date for the debut flight of its Space Launch System rocket. This week, an agency spokesperson told Ars that "NASA is working toward a launch for the Artemis I mission by the end of this year."

Blue Origin has lost a number of key leaders and engineers this summer, CNBC has learned, with most leaving in the weeks after founder Jeff Bezos' spaceflight.

Operators of satellite constellations are constantly forced to move their satellites because of encounters with other spacecraft and pieces of space junk. And, thanks to SpaceX's Starlink satellites, the number of such dangerous approaches will continue to grow, according to estimates based on available data.

Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin brought its fight against NASA’s Moon program to federal court on Monday, doubling down on accusations that the agency wrongly evaluated its lunar lander proposal. The complaint escalates a monthslong crusade by the company to win a chunk of lunar lander funds that was only given to its rival, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and comes weeks after Blue Origin’s first protest over the Moon program was squashed by a federal watchdog agency. Now in court, Blue Origin’s challenge could add another pause to SpaceX’s contract and a new lengthy delay to NASA’s race to land astronauts on the Moon by 2024.

Late last month, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) awarded astronautic launches services provider Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) a $178 million contract to launch a science mission to Jupiter's ice-covered moon Europa. This mission was originally intended to fly on The Boeing Company's Space Launch System, a rocket built exclusively for NASA's Artemis program. However, the agency had started to caution since early last year that if it chose to proceed with the SLS, cost overruns worth billions would accompany the decision.