NASA

SpaceX's mega Starship rocket came within a few seconds of blasting off on a test flight, but some of the engines failed to start triggering a launch abort. Elon Musk's company said on Thursday that it will have to figure out what went wrong before making another attempt to send Starship on a space-skimming flight halfway around the world. It was supposed to be the 13th flight for Starship, which at 407 feet (124 metres) tall with 33 main engines is the world's biggest and most powerful rocket. Twenty of SpaceX's newest and most advanced Starlinks were on board Starship for release during the planned hourlong flight. The internet satellites were going to try communicating with Starlinks already in orbit while taking photos of Starship's heat shield. Neither the first-stage booster nor spacecraft were meant to be recovered, with both ending up in the sea. NASA is counting on Starship to land its astronauts on the moon in the next few years.

NASA astronaut Anil Menon and two Russian cosmonauts reached the International Space Station to hugs and handshakes in the early hours of Wednesday (India time) onboard Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft after a little over three-hour journey. The Roscosmos spacecraft carrying Menon and Russian cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina lifted off from Baikonur at 8:17 pm IST on Tuesday just as the orbital laboratory flew over the cosmodrome. After an eight-minute climb to the preliminary orbit, the Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft began a nearly three-hour chase to the International Space Station to dock at the Prichal module at 11:52 pm (IST). The astronaut then began a series of checks in the spacecraft and the space station before the opening hatch at about 2:00 am (IST). This marks Menon's first spaceflight and the second flight for the Russian cosmonauts, according to NASA. Incidentally, the live video feed from the space station was cut off at the time the hatch of the spacecraft was about to open

Nasa astronaut Anil Menon and two Russian cosmonauts lifted off onboard a Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft from Kazakhstan on an eight-month mission to the International Space Station on Tuesday. The spacecraft carrying Menon and Russian cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina lifted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome at 8:17 p.m. IST. After a two-orbit, three-hour trip to the station, the spacecraft will automatically dock at 11:56 p.m. IST to the Prichal module. Once aboard, the trio will join NASA astronauts Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, and Chris Williams, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, Sergei Mikaev, and Andrey Fedyaev.

Anil Menon, a NASA astronaut of Indian descent, is set to embark on an eight-month mission to the International Space Station on July 14 from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Born in Minneapolis to Ukrainian and Indian immigrants, Menon is an emergency medicine physician and a US Space Force colonel. During his stint with the US Air Force, he served on the frontlines in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom and also worked for the Himalayan Rescue Association, caring for climbers on Mount Everest. Menon, 49, has also spent a year in India as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar to study and support Polio vaccination initiatives. He is scheduled to travel to space aboard the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft along with cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina. Menon began his career at NASA as a flight surgeon in 2014 and worked with astronauts living and working on the International Space Station. Menonn joined SpaceX in 2018, where he started the company's medical programm

A commercial spacecraft is set to capture Nasa's Swift Observatory and raise its orbit, extending the telescope's life after solar storms accelerated its descent towards Earth

Nasa announced two awards to Astrobotic Technology Inc. totaling about $298 million, one for about $144 million to Firefly Aerospace Inc. and another for about $148 million to Intuitive Machines Inc

US-based staffing and technology solutions provider Tryfacta has won two contracts under NASA's Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) programme, giving it greater access to federal IT business opportunities through 2036. The company, which recently filed draft papers for a proposed USD 100-150 million IPO at GIFT City, Gujarat, said it won contracts under Category B (Enterprise-Wide IT Service Solutions) and Category C (IT Mission-Based Services), enabling it to compete for federal IT task orders across US government agencies through a pre-competed procurement channel. The multiple-award, have a 10-year ordering period from November 1, 2026, to October 31, 2036. Each contract carries a maximum value of USD 20 billion. With the awards, Tryfacta will be eligible to bid for task orders covering enterprise IT services, cybersecurity, cloud transformation, application development, AI-driven automation, data analytics and programme management support. Earlier this month, Tryfa

The Artemis III crew announcement grabbed headlines, but the bigger story is Nasa's shift from building spacecraft to buying services from private companies

As SpaceX prepares for a landmark IPO, president Gwynne Shotwell emerges as the executive who transformed Elon Musk's vision into a global space powerhouse

NASA ordered ISS astronauts to prepare for evacuation after an air leak worsened in Russia's Zvezda module, before later lifting the alert

A Blue Origin rocket exploded during a test at the launch pad on Thursday night, shaking nearby homes and briefly painting the sky orange. Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin said its New Glenn rocket exploded during an engine-firing test. All personnel have been accounted for, the company said via X. Emergency officials said there is no threat due to fumes or other potential hazards. The massive New Glenn was grounded in April after it left a satellite in the wrong orbit because of engine failure. It was only the third flight of the rocket that Blue Origin intends to use to launch landers to the moon for NASA. Homes shook in nearby Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach around 9 pm, with residents turning to social media to wonder what happened. Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Launch Complex 36 is visible from the beach, and the internet quickly filled with photos of an orange fireball. "We experienced an anomaly during today's hotfire test," Blue Origin said in a brief statement. "We will prov

At a press conference, Nasa Administrator Jared Isaacman said the Moon Base programme would help the US master the skills needed to live and operate in the moon's harsh environment.

NASA is already ordering landers, rovers and drones for a sprawling moon base, less than two months after the Artemis II's record-breaking lunar flyaround. The space agency outlined the first phase of its moon base plans on Tuesday, awarding hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to four US companies. Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin will provide a pair of landers to deliver moon buggies to the lunar surface, at a spot near the moon's south pole. These so-called lunar terrain vehicles will be built by Astrolab and Lunar Outpost. Firefly Aerospace, which landed successfully on the moon last year, will deliver the first drones to the moon. All this hardware is ideally supposed to arrive before the first Artemis astronauts land on the moon, planned for as early as 2028. During April's Artemis II mission, four astronauts flew around the moon, travelling deeper into space than the Apollo moon crews did during the late 1960s and early 1970s. For next year's Artemis III, another team of ...

The announcement comes after Nasa unveiled a reorganization of its internal structure on Friday, combining various departments and promoting officials into new positions

SpaceX launched its biggest, most powerful Starship yet on a test flight Friday, an upgraded version that NASA is counting on to land astronauts on the moon. The redesigned mega rocket made its debut two days after SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced he's taking the company public. It blasted off from the southern tip of Texas, carrying 20 mock Starlink satellites for release halfway around the world. It's the 12th test flight of the rocket that Musk is building to get people to Mars one day. But first comes the moon and NASA's Artemis program. The last of the old space-skimming Starships lifted off in October. SpaceX's third-generation Starship -- a souped-up version dubbed V3 -- soared from a brand-new launch pad at Starbase, near the Mexican border. Last-minute pad issues thwarted Thursday evening's launch attempt. SpaceX was hoping to avoid the fireworks it experienced during back-to-back launches last year when midair explosions rained wreckage down on the Atlantic. Earlier flights

Artemis II's astronauts returned from the moon with a dramatic splashdown in the Pacific on Friday to close out humanity's first lunar voyage in more than a half-century. It was a triumphant homecoming for the crew of four whose record-breaking lunar flyby revealed not only swaths of the moon's far side never seen before by human eyes but a total solar eclipse. Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada's Jeremy Hansen hit the atmosphere travelling Mach 33 or 33 times the speed of sound a blistering blur not seen since NASA's Apollo moonshots of the 1960s and 1970s. Their Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, made the plunge on automatic pilot. The tension in Mission Control mounted as the capsule became engulfed in red-hot plasma during peak heating and entered a planned communication blackout. All eyes were on the capsule's life-protecting heat shield that had to withstand thousands of degrees during reentry. On the spacecraft's only other test flight

From admiring rocket launches as a child growing up in Houston to steering the operations at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Indian-American scientist Amit Kshatriya has had a stellar innings at the space agency that has set on a mission to land astronauts on the moon. As NASA's Associate Administrator, Wisconsin-born Kshatriya serves as the highest-ranking civil servant at the agency and as a senior advisor to Administrator Jared Isaacman. Kshatriya leads the agency's 10 centre directors, as well as the mission directorate associate administrators at NASA Headquarters in Washington. He also acts as the agency's Chief Operating Officer. Born to first-generation Indian immigrant parents, Kshatriya holds a Bachelor of Science in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and a Master of Arts in mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin. He was born in Brookfield, Wisconsin, but considers Katy, a suburb of Housto

Drawing ever closer to Earth, the Artemis II astronauts tidied up their lunar cruiser for the upcoming "fireball" return and reflected on their historic journey around the moon, describing it as surreal and profound. As the next-to-last day of their flight dawned Thursday, humanity's first lunar explorers in more than half a century were less than 150,000 miles (240,000 kilometres) from home with the odometer clicking down. "We have to get back. There's so much data that you've seen already, but all the good stuff is coming back with us. There are so many more pictures, so many more stories," said pilot Victor Glover, adding that "riding a fireball through the atmosphere is profound as well." Being cut off from all of humanity for nearly an hour while behind the moon was especially "surreal", according to commander Reid Wiseman. "There's a lot that our brains have to process ... and it is a true gift," Wiseman said late Wednesday during the crew's first news conference since before

NASA’s Artemis II mission has launched, sending four astronauts around the Moon for the first time since 1972. Here’s what makes this mission historic, what went wrong after liftoff

Lunar love knows no bounds. Now hurtling home from the moon, the Artemis II astronauts took a poignant page from Apollo 8 earlier this week, proposing deeply personal names for a pair of lunar craters. Commander Reid Wiseman and his crew asked permission to name one small, fresh crater after their capsule called Integrity and another after his late wife, Carroll. Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen made the request right before Monday's lunar fly-around. Wiseman was too emotional to talk. Carroll Wiseman, a neonatal nurse, died of cancer in 2020. "Just for me personally, that was kind of the pinnacle moment of the mission for me," Wiseman said from space Wednesday night. During Apollo 8 in 1968, astronaut Jim Lovell bestowed his wife's name upon a prominent lunar peak: Mount Marilyn. It was humanity's first trip to the moon and she anxiously awaited his return back home in Houston. The three Americans and one Canadian of Artemis II are the first lunar visitors since Apollo 17 closed