Space

The exuberance was palpable at APL as employees watched the fruits of their labor on the New Horizons Pluto mission unfold before them, underscoring the sense of awe and wonder of space exploration.

SpaceX plans more rigorous testing in the wake of June’s Falcon 9 launch failure.

USAF designed it, but will industry build Super Strypi rail-launched rocket?

Flyback boosters and a reusable, scramjet-powered second stage to feature in Australian subscale launch demonstration

Company founder Elon Musk says the Falcon 9 upper stage exploded when a high-pressure helium bottle broke loose and overpressurized the structure.

The large, heart-shaped feature on Pluto is a frozen plain rich in carbon monoxide.

Data from Pluto flyby will keep coming in through 2016, but early results raise interesting new questions about the makeup of Pluto and Charon.

Congress is moving to prolong dependence on Russia to launch astronauts, undercut commercial space and squeeze aeronautics research.

Days after the New Horizons flyby of Pluto, our editors discuss the mission’s surprises and discoveries. With the spacecraft sending back just 1% of data it is supposed to collect, scientists are already learning new insights about the dwarf planet, its moons and environs.

A new image shows a strange formation on the surface of Pluto's moon Charon.

New Horizons spacecraft flies around Pluto and begins transmitting data that will provide new knowledge of the far reaches of the Solar System.

Pluto has previously unsuspected mountains of water ice as high as the Rockies, while its moon Charon features spectacular canyons as much as 6 mi. deep.

As enthusiasm mounts for microgravity research in orbit, the end of the ISS service life looms.

The $170 million agreement financed the build and launch on PSLV of three remote-sensing satellites for Beijing-based 21AT.

USAF sent destruct signals for Falcon 9 a full 70 sec. after mishap.

LAUREL, Maryland — Pluto’s nitrogen-rich atmosphere appears to be leaking across open space to collect on at least one of the poles of the dwarf planet’s large moon Charon, according to scientists processing data the New Horizons probe sent to Earth shortly before its closest approach to the two bodies.

Mission managers now have settled in to wait for a brief signal Tuesday night that will let them know how the spacecraft fared in its intricately choreographed flyby.

From January to July, New Horizons has sent back a series of ever-sharper images of Pluto and its moons.

The U.S. Air Force might need to continue using Russian-made RD-180 engines for the time being, despite congressional wishes otherwise, crimping Aerojet Rocketdyne’s EELV ambitions.

Glen Fountain, New Horizons project manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said Monday the spacecraft will hit its 60 x 90-mi. box “almost at the center of it” and right on time.

Planetary scientists are getting their first detailed look at the terrain on Pluto, as the New Horizons spacecraft closes in for a fast flyby on July 14.

The recent ISS cargo failures are not slowing down the momentum toward research focus, especially when it comes to space commercialization.

Four NASA astronauts, all veterans with experience aboard the International Space Station, space shuttle or Russian Soyuz spacecraft, have been named to train to fly aboard the first U.S. commercial crew missions, tentatively planned for 2016-17.

Details of the critical technology at the core of an innovative hybrid hypersonic propulsion system for air and space systems have been unveiled for the first time by its British-based developer, Reaction Engines.

How to get to Mars is only part of the question. NASA calls for ideas on the best places to actually land, optimal also for living, mining resources and conducting scientific exploration.