Live coverage: International Space Station crew lands in Kazakhstan

In a blend of interesting circumstances and happenstance, two private companies and Japan’s space agency are all poised to land on the Moon in the back half of January 2024.

The Obama administration’s fiscal 2016 budget includes $18.5 billion for NASA — a half-billion-dollar increase — that continues development of a new mega-rocket and capsule for deep space exploration and significantly boosts funding for commercial spacecraft to ferry crews to and from the space station, agency officials said Monday.

Blue Origin teams in West Texas are preparing for another launch of the company’s reusable New Shepard suborbital rocket Thursday to loft dozens of microgravity research payloads to the edge of space.