OSIRIS-REx will touch down on asteroid Bennu, collect a sample of the dust and begin its journey back to Earth, where scientists will study it, hoping to learn secrets of the solar system’s origin.
Considering what we know about the key ingredients for life’s formation on Earth, here are three explanations for how this process may have occurred on our sister planet.
Duckweed is the perfect space food: small, fast-growing and nutritious. By studying how light levels changed the production of radiation-fighting antioxidants, researchers made it even better.
Martian meteorites allow scientists here on Earth to decode that planet’s geology, more than a decade before the first missions are scheduled to bring rocks back home from Mars.
When it comes to commercial space tourism, suborbital flight are the first frontier. But what are the risks? Are there health requirements? What should you know before taking such a way-out trip?
SpaceX’s launch of astronauts to the International Space Station will make it the first private company to launch humans to space. The effort has ramifications for NASA and spaceflight in general.
An update of 50-year-old regulations has kickstarted research into the next generation of rockets. Powered by nuclear fission, these new systems could be the key to faster, safer exploration of space.