Mars 2022 – Spaceflight Now

August 5, 2025

Breaking News

[ August 3, 2025 ] Starlink mission marks SpaceX’s 450th flight-proven Falcon booster launched Falcon 9
[ August 1, 2025 ] NASA, SpaceX ‘thread the clouds’ to launch Crew-11 to the International Space Station Falcon 9
[ July 31, 2025 ] Launch preview: SpaceX, NASA launches Crew-11 following 1-day weather scrub Falcon 9
[ July 29, 2025 ] SpaceX launches 28 Starlink satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Falcon 9
[ July 28, 2025 ] SpaceX, NASA conduct static fire test of a Falcon 9 rocket ahead of the Crew-11 launch Falcon 9

NASA developing plans for commercially-built Mars orbiter

July 27, 2016 Stephen Clark

NASA is advancing a plan to send a robotic orbiter to Mars in the early 2020s, developing designs with five U.S. satellite makers for a mission to extend high-resolution mapping capabilities, telecommunications relay functions, and potentially act as a waypoint for Martian soil samples destined for return to Earth.

NASA eyes ion engines for Mars orbiter launching in 2022

March 3, 2015 Stephen Clark

NASA officials want the agency’s next Mars orbiter to pull double duty as a communications relay station for a fleet of surface landers and as a trailblazer for a future round-trip sample return mission and human expeditions to the red planet.