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.

The U.S. Air Force on Wednesday awarded billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX an $83 million contract to launch a GPS satellite, breaking the monopoly that Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) and Boeing Co (BA.N) have held on military space launches for more than a decade.

Putting such a large spacecraft on Mars is unprecedented for a nation or company.

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.

SpaceX successfully landed its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship at sea after launching it into space early Friday morning. It's the third time the company has recovered the vehicle post-launch, and the second time the rocket has landed intact on the ship. Now, SpaceX has both demonstrated that it can land the Falcon 9 at sea, and that the company can repeat the process. The logistics for this mission made sticking the landing unlikely, SpaceX said on Monday...

The Boeing Starliner, one of two new spacecraft meant to break the Russian stranglehold on sending people to orbit, has hit a snag. Originally scheduled to start flying next year, the Starliner won't carry a crewed mission to the International Space Station until 2018 at the earliest. Six years is long enough. Ever since the 2011 retirement of the space shuttle NASA has been pushing for privately built craft capable of ferrying astronauts to orbit, which would let the agency buy...

SpaceX just successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. It was the third time in a row the company has landed a rocket booster at sea, and the fourth time overall.

Today, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared a picture of all the rockets the company has landed so far, noting that one of them will re-fly for the first time in September or October. When that happens, SpaceX will finally be able to boast that it has reused one of its Falcon 9 vehicles. Those target dates are a little later than what Musk had originally suggested, however. After SpaceX's first drone ship landing in April, the CEO said the Falcon 9 rocket could fly again on an orbital mission as early as May or June.

Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, met with Secretary of Defense Ash Carter Wednesday as the Pentagon looks to raise its technology game. The focus of the closed-door get together was "innovation," according to a Defense Department spokesman, although Musk is also looking to win more government business for SpaceX, which launches satellites into orbit.

Ever since Elon Musk founded a start-up space company 14 years ago, the goal has always been the same: Establishing a colony on Mars. Now he’s finally beginning to reveal how he plans to get there. Starting as soon as 2018, Musk’s SpaceX plans to fly an unmanned spacecraft to Mars. The unmanned flights would continue about every two years, timed for when Earth and Mars are closest in orbit, and, if everything goes according to plan, build toward the first human mission to Mars with the goal of landing in 2025, Musk has said.

After the space shuttle retired in 2011, the Delta IV Heavy became, by default, the world's most powerful rocket. Standing 71.6 meters tall, fully 15 meters taller than the full space shuttle stack, the rocket built by United Launch Alliance can deliver up to 28.4 tons of mass to low-Earth orbit. On Saturday, under splendid blue-and-white Florida skies, the rocket made one of its rare launches by delivering a spy satellite payload, NROL-37, for the National Reconnaissance Office into orbit. The agency has released no information about the satellite, but from the Delta IV Heavy's use we can conclude...

As we get close to the end of September, when Elon Musk has promised to lay bare his plans for colonizing Mars at an international space conference, it seems like the ambitious founder of SpaceX can hardly contain his excitement. In an interview with The Washington Post, Musk gushed, “I’m so tempted to talk more about the details of it. But I have to restrain myself.” SpaceX fandom has speculated for years about details of Musk's ideas, which include the Mars Colonial Transporter concept. The Transporter likely consists of a large first stage rocket and...

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched two satellites into orbit this morning, but the company failed to land the vehicle on a floating drone ship at sea afterward. Prior to the launch, the company said this landing would be difficult, since the rocket was going to a very high orbit known as geostationary transfer orbit, or GTO. Sending satellites to GTO uses up a lot of fuel during the initial ascent, leaving less fuel to pull off the vehicle's return.

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.

New capabilities, new entrepreneurialism and rekindled dreams are making space exciting again, says Oliver Morton SHORTLY after sunset there had been juddering green stabs of lightning to the south, but by a quarter to one in the morning there is nothing in the warm, wet July air over Cape Canaveral but a thin patchwork of moonlit cloud. And then, precisely at the time it was meant to happen, there is a sudden light on the horizon, some 18km away. A light that rises.

A rocket operated by the aerospace company SpaceX explodes on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral where it was being test-fired ahead of a launch.

For most of its 14 year existence, SpaceX has focused on designing and developing the hardware that will lead to its ultimate goal: colonizing Mars. These plans have remained largely secret from the general public, as company founder Elon Musk has dropped only the barest of hints. But that is expected to change on Sept. 27, during a session at the International Astronautical Congress, when Musk details some of these plans for the first time in a public forum.

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.

Today, Elon Musk will finally tell the world how he wants to colonize Mars — an ambition of his that has served as the foundation for essentially all of his commercial spaceflight endeavors. Musk will specify his plans for making humans a multi-planetary species during a one-hour speech at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.