commercial spaceflight

As the dust settled following SpaceX’s brief, explosive test launch of Starship in April, both the company and the Federal Aviation Administration dug into investigating the aftermath. The gigantic rocket’s flight lasted just four minutes…

Last night, an Axiom Space mission carrying a private crew blasted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, heading towards the International Space Station. The crew of four, led by former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, flew aboard a…

Soon, the Ispace lander will have plenty of company. Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic will be sending its Peregrine lander on the debut flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket, which could launch in June. Houston-based Intuitive…

SpaceX’s Starship—a spacecraft that might one day transport people to Mars—has completed its first integrated launch, but made it only a few minutes into its highly-anticipated debut long-distance flight.Just four minutes after liftoff from…

Some people would rather invest these resources in solving global problems, not launching astronauts to other worlds. People in the 1960s questioned the Apollo program for similar reasons—it was also a time of systemic inequality and fears…

“We provide our customers the guidance and insight needed to ensure their research is rigorous, well-designed, and impactful to the broader scientific community–this helps move the needle forward on microgravity research,” she wrote.Sirisha…

If astronauts need to grab some lunar ice on a future Artemis mission, that won’t be a problem from a legal perspective, says Rossana Deplano, a researcher at the University of Leicester in the UK who has extensively studied the Artemis…

From the start, were you trying to support commercial partnerships with the space industry, or did that develop out of necessity?I would describe the goal as being to increase the efficiency of the tax dollar and to reduce the cost of…

In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a pair of outspoken scientists reveal how warp drives—the show’s ubiquitous propulsion system used to get travelers around space—can be incredibly environmentally destructive. From then on,…

After months of suspense, the Federal Aviation Administration has finally weighed in on the environmental effects of the planned expansion of SpaceX’s sprawling Starbase launch facility near Boca Chica, Texas. The agency says that if SpaceX…