Mars 2022 – Spaceflight Now

August 26, 2025

Breaking News

[ August 25, 2025 ] Poor weather forces scrub of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 10 Mission Reports
[ August 25, 2025 ] Cargo ship docks with International Space Station Mission Reports
[ August 24, 2025 ] SpaceX scrubs crucial 10th test flight of Starship Mission Reports
[ August 24, 2025 ] NASA, SpaceX launch Dragon to the ISS on extended cargo, station boosting mission Falcon 9
[ August 23, 2025 ] Launch preview: NASA, SpaceX to launch Cargo Dragon on a mission to boost space station orbit 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.