NASA

SpaceX's debut astronaut launch is the biggest, most visible opening shot yet in NASA's grand plan for commercializing Earth's backyard.

Amateur astronauts, private space stations, flying factories, out-of-this-world movie sets this is the future the space agency is striving to shape as it eases out of low-Earth orbit and aims for the moon and Mars.

Two veteran NASA astronauts were headed for the International Space Station on May 30 after Elon Musk's SpaceX became the first commercial company to launch a rocket carrying humans into orbit, ushering in a new era in space travel.    

The launch of a SpaceX rocket ship with two NASA astronauts on a history-making flight into orbit was called off with less than 17 minutes to go in the countdown on May 27 because of thunderclouds and the risk of lightning.
Liftoff was rescheduled for Saturday afternoon.

In the beginning, everyone was skeptical. But Elon Musk's SpaceX defied expectations- and on May 27 hopes to make history by ferrying two NASA astronauts into space, the first crewed flight from U.S. soil in nine long years.

NASA gave the green light on May 22 to next week's launch of two astronauts aboard a SpaceX vessel- the first crewed space flight from U.S. soil in nine years and a crucial step towards ending American dependence on Russian rockets.

Europe and NASA's Solar Orbiter rocketed into space on Feb. 9 night on an unprecedented mission to capture the first pictures of the sun's elusive poles.

"We're on the way to the sun. Go Solar Orbiter!" said Cesar Garcia Marirrodriga, project manager for the European Space Agency. "It's a fantastic moment ... it's like, well, we're unstoppable."

NASA's Christina Koch returned to Earth safely Feb. 6 having shattered the spaceflight record for female astronauts after almost a year aboard the International Space Station.

Koch touched down at 0912 GMT on the Kazakh steppe after 328 days in space along with Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency and Alexander Skvortsov of the Russian space agency.

A potentially dangerous asteroid with a diameter of 440 to 990 meters is approaching Earth, according to NASA's website.

According to the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a celestial body with the number 163373 will approach the Earth at a minimum distance of February 15.

Boeing's new Starliner capsule ended up in the wrong orbit after lifting off on its first test flight on Dec. 20, a blow to the company's effort to launch astronauts for NASA next year.

NASA's Maryland Space Center experts in have confirmed that there are traces of water vapor above the surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa, Science Alert reported.

They analyzed data obtained from the Hawaiian Keck Observatory over 17 observations with a spectrograph to study the chemical compositions of other planets' atmospheres by scanning the infrared light they release or absorb