Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic has unveiled a new passenger spacecraft 16 months after a fatal accident destroyed its sister ship.

Back in 1978, excitement about the future of NASA, with the space shuttle soon to debut, was palpable. So when the space agency called for astronaut applications, a record 8,000 people responded. That number has stood as a record for applications until today, when the space agency announced that a whopping 18,300 people applied to join its 2017 astronaut class.

In 2014, Harvard's acceptance rate was 5.9 percent. NASA's latest round of astronaut candidate applications is going to be just a little tougher: With a record-breaking 18,300-plus applications and just 14 spots, the acceptance rate for NASA's astronaut applications will clock in at a whopping .08 percent. Until now, the record for astronaut applications was a relatively puny 8,000 – and hadn't been challenged since 1978. Only 6,300 applied in 2012, and that was the second...

The core module of the iconic Mir space station, launched 30 years ago Saturday, was a cramped living space that could barely support two cosmonauts. But over the years, the station evolved like a multicellular organism, sprouting six more pressurized limbs from the DOS-7 base block to become the largest spacefaring vessel of its day, as well as the first continuously inhabited orbital outpost in human history.

It’s been Britain’s best-loved mapping agency for years, providing navigation tools for organisations and stubborn dads finally pulling U-turns across the country. Now, Ordnance Survey (OS) has taken its next giant leap for mapkind, creating a digital recreation of Mars that could have potential applications for future space missions.

Hundreds of people took to social media to report a bright flash seen in the sky above northern Scotland. CCTV footage of the phenomenon was captured by Facebook user Wayne McDonald. Witnesses above the Highlands and Aberdeenshire said they had seen an explosion – but it was not accompanied by thunder.

NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly has safely landed on earth having completed the longest ever US spaceflight aboard the International Space Station. Report by Lydia Batham.

After living for nearly a year aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly is two inches taller than his identical twin brother Mark. One of the main goals of his groundbreaking mission is to study how well humans can endure — mind, body and spirit — on a long-duration spaceflight. Kelly, who has spent more time in space than any other American astronaut, reports that overall he "feels pretty good" and now begins what may be a year-long...

A Soyuz capsule carrying International Space Station (ISS) crew members U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly, Russian cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Mikhail Korniyenko descends beneath a parachute near the town of Dzhezkazgan (Zhezkazgan), Kazakhstan, March 2, 2016.

Whew! We can all breathe a sigh of relief. A 100-foot wide asteroid whizzed by the Earth on Monday night and (obviously) avoided a collision with our fair planet. Asteroid 2013 TX68 made its closest approach to Earth at about 7 p.m. ET Monday, according to Laurie Cantillo, a spokeswoman for NASA.

On March 10, 2006, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter set six of its engines to a powerful burn, allowing it to slow down enough for the gravitational pull of Mars to catch it and bring it into orbit. Ten years later, NASA is celebrating the MRO's continued success: The orbiter has lasted for five times longer than its planned primary scientific mission and counting, delivering unprecedented data on Mars and its history back to scientists on Earth.

NASA has successfully tested their first RS-25 rocket engine for the agency’s next heavy lift rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), for 500 seconds. The SLS, which will use 4 RS-25 engines in its core stage, is designed to take humans to deep space destinations like asteroids or Mars.

It's a big idea. It's a bold idea. And at first blush, it seems a bit of a daft idea. A company called Bigelow Aerospace wants to build space stations for the government and hotels for private customers that will inflate like balloons once they reach outer space. Bigelow’s inflatables have the potential to revolutionize spaceflight by providing lighter, and much larger, places to live in space. But the big question remains: Does anyone really want to live in a space balloon?

Junked? Maybe not. Hitomi, a Japanese astronomy satellite, was thought to be lost after it failed to come online. Now the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency says the satellite has phoned home – but a full recovery will take months. Hitomi launched on 17 February and was due to come online on 26 March, but failed to communicate with Earth. A tweet by the US Joint Space Operations Center reported five pieces of debris around the satellite shortly afterwards.

Scientists are sending four strains of fungi to the International Space Station to see what happens when the tiny organisms contend with the stress of microgravity and space radiation. It's not just for kicks. Researchers say that putting these fungi in an extraterrestrial environment could cause them to produce new medicines for use on Earth and perhaps even on long-term space missions.

A SpaceX Dragon cargo ship delivered the first inflatable room for astronauts to the International Space Station on Saturday, two days after launching from Cape Canaveral. Astronauts, including the UK’s Tim Peake, orbiting 250 miles above Earth used a robotic arm to capture the Dragon, which holds three tonnes of freight and had as part of its payload a soft-sided compartment built by Bigelow Aerospace. The pioneering pod, packed tightly for launch, should swell...

The planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope has been returned to stable condition just days after it slipped into "emergency mode," according to NASA. Team engineers were able to point the spacecraft's communications antenna toward Earth on Sunday morning and have since been downloading data that will tell them exactly what went wrong. The Kepler Space Telescope is 75 million miles away from Earth, so it takes 13 minutes for...

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 been teasing potential Mars plans for a while now, but the company just announced a launch date—and it’s soon. They plan to launch to the surface of Mars in 2018. Especially intriguing is that the announcement refers to the spacecraft as the “Red Dragon.” Does this mean that we’ll be seeing an update to the spacecraft so that it can handle the conditions of the red planet? We hope so.

Last night, SpaceX released some new information on what it will cost you to send a satellite into orbit aboard their Falcon 9 or Falcon 9 Heavy rockets. The damage? Anywhere from $62 to $90 million. SpaceX has long been touting its ability to drive down the cost of spaceflight for either commercial or governmental customers. And after the company’s recent barge landing, it looks like SpaceX has figured just how much cheaper it’ll be.