The sleek mega rocket is vital to NASA's plans for landing astronauts on the Moon later this decade -- and Elon Musk's hopes of eventually colonizing Mars. Two prior attempts have ended in spectacular explosions.

Ingenuity, a drone about 1.6 feet (0.5 meters) tall, arrived on Mars in 2021 aboard the rover Perseverance and became the first motorized craft to fly autonomously on another planet. Data from the helicopter are transmitted via Perseverance back to Earth, but communications were suddenly lost during a test flight...

The video was beamed to Earth using a laser transceiver on the Psyche probe, which is journeying to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter to explore a mysterious metal-rich object. When it sent the video, the spaceship was 80 times the distance between the Earth and Moon.

"Such an incredibly successful day," a SpaceX announcer said. "Even though we did have a… rapid unscheduled disassembly of both the Super Heavy Booster and the ship." The largest rocket ever built blasted off from the company's Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas shortly after 7:00 am local time.

During takeoff, SpaceX video showed a hail of debris being blasted as far as the Gulf of Mexico, over 1,400 feet (420 meters) away. After Thursday's test, Musk said that SpaceX had begun building "a massive water-cooled steel plate to go under the launch mount.

Terran 1 was made using the world's largest 3D metal printers and was powered by engines using liquid oxygen and liquid natural gas, what Relativity calls the propellants of the future capable of eventually fueling a voyage to Mars. Although it failed to reach orbit, the test flight proved that...

The volunteers will live inside a 1,700 square-foot (160 square-meter) home for one year, dubbed "Mars Dune Alpha," which includes two bathrooms, a vertical farm to grow salad, a room dedicated to medical care, an area for relaxing and several workstations. Researchers will regularly test the crew's response to stressful...

"I have decided to send a group of people from my ESA team to the UAE to see which domains of cooperation we can intensify," ESA head Josef Aschbacher tells TRENDS in an interview.

Musk has promised the rocket will complete its first orbital test this year, and a version of Starship has already been selected to be used as a lander for NASA's Artemis missions to return humans to the Moon. Aarti Matthews, director of Starship crew and cargo, said SpaceX envisaged the...

Liftoff is scheduled for 2:17 pm local time (1817 GMT) from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with the potential for up to a two-hour delay if necessary.The chance for favorable weather conditions within that window sat at 60 percent Thursday evening."The weather looks good," and isn't expected to be a...

Dubai, UAE: The Emirates Mars Mission, the first interplanetary exploration undertaken by an Arab nation, has made first observations of a new type of proton aurora around Mars. The spatially variable ‘patchy’ proton aurora potentially triggers new insights into unexpected behaviors in the Martian atmosphere, an official statement said. The...

The highly anticipated uncrewed mission dubbed Artemis 1 will bring the United States a step closer to returning astronauts to the Moon five decades after humans last walked on the lunar surface. Mission manager Mike Sarafin, said the NASA team "agreed to move our launch date to Saturday, September the...

Between 100,000 and 200,000 spectators are expected to attend the launch of NASA's most powerful rocket yet, the uncrewed 98-meter Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

The Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars in February 2021, has so far collected 11 samples as part of its hunt for signatures of ancient life.

The European Space Agency on Wednesday ended cooperation with Russia on three missions to the Moon due to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, following a previous decision to do the same for a Mars mission. The ESA said it would "discontinue cooperative activities" on Luna-25, 26 and 27, a series of...

A Russian-European mission to land a rover on Mars has been suspended due to the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Space Agency announced Thursday, as Moscow said it regretted the “bitter” decision. The ExoMars mission had been set to use a Russian launcher later this year to send a...

The company will make a rocket to bring back rocks from Mars.

The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center (MBRSC) announced that it will host the 17th International Conference on Space Operations (SpaceOps 2023) for the first time in Gulf region, local media reports said. The conference will be held at the World Trade Centre in Dubai, UAE from March 6-10, 2023. Themed...

Exploring space is no longer a luxury, it is humanity's future, says Tunisian astrophysicist and Nasa scientist Nour Raouafi

Beyond the science milestones, billionaires battled to reach the final frontier first, an all-civilian crew went into orbit.

On February 9, the UAE announced that its exploratory probe, ‘Hope’ had successfully entered Mars' orbit, marking it the first Arab expedition to the Red Planet.

The study in Science analysed high-resolution images captured by Perseverance of the cliffs that were once the banks of the delta.

The United Arab Emirates will launch a spacecraft to explore a major asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, officials said Tuesday, after a UAE probe reached the red planet early this year.

The competition, called Planet X, has been launched by Emirates Mars Mission in partnership with the Dubai Airshow 2021.

The six-wheeled robot collected its first sample, dubbed "Montdenier" on September 6, and its second, "Montagnac" from the same rock on September 8.

The equity investment was reportedly a part of Interstellar Lab's latest $3-million seed round.

The rover succeeds in its second attempt to scoop up a piece of Martian rock for future analysis by scientists on Earth

The aim of the mission is to take a complete picture of Mars’ lower and upper atmospheres The Hope will study the Martian atmosphere, the relationship between the upper layer and lower layer The Emirates Mars Mission (EMM), the first such exploration undertaken by an Arab nation, today said the...