Articles by William Harwood

Virgin Galactic, buoyed by a successful July 11 suborbital test flight with founder Richard Branson on the company’s winged rocket plane, re-opened ticket sales Thursday for rides to space starting at $450,000 per seat.

Five months after landing on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover is gearing up to collect its first core sample next month, mission managers said Wednesday, drilling out a lipstick-size bit of rock from the floor of an ancient lakebed where the remnants of past microbial life might be preserved.

Nine days after being upstaged by Richard Branson, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is finally ready for his own flight into history, blasting off Tuesday morning aboard a fully automated spacecraft he believes will usher in a new era of commercial passenger service.

While Jeff Bezos and his three crewmates worked through a two-day “astronaut” training course, engineers Sunday tentatively cleared their New Shepard rocket and capsule for blastoff Tuesday on a 10-minute up-and-down flight to the edge of space, matching rival Richard Branson’s feat nine days earlier.

An 18-year-old Dutch student will join Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark and aviation pioneer Wally Funk next Tuesday when they blast off aboard the Amazon founder’s New Shepard rocket for its first sub-orbital flight to space with passengers on board.