The launch of a new rocket is always an exciting event. SpaceX’s ‘go fast and fail’ approach means that even though the test ended with engineers blowing up the rocket, it was a valuable first flight.
China has completed construction of the Tiangong space station, and science projects are now underway. The station is an important piece of China’s ambitious plans for space activity in coming years.
Going to space requires more than just rocket science.
John Lamb via Getty Images
Spacecraft are just a small part of what it takes for humans to become an interplanetary species. A political science professor explains how there is much more to creating a spacefaring society.
Douglas Rushkoff’s Survival of the Richest is less about tech billionaires and their ‘bonkers’ escape plans than it is an entertaining primer on the various ills of late capitalism.
When the Orion Crew Capsule orbits the Moon there will be no one on board. But the mission will mark a key step in bringing humans back to Earth’s dusty sidekick.
By tracking a meteorite found in Morocco back to its origin in an asteroid crater on Mars millions of years ago, scientists can learn more about how the planets formed.
Oxia Planum on Mars – where the rover was set to land.
Nasa
The European space agency will need both a launch vehicle and a lander platform to launch its ExoMars rover without help from Russia.
A panorama stitched together from about 100 individual Curiosity images. The ‘door’ is circled, and is tiny and hard to see at this scale.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
We should not be surprised that some of the innumerable rocks on Mars have weird shapes, because many have been sand-blasted by wind erosion for billions of years.