Mars

SpaceX’s Elon Musk announces vision for colonizing Mars

September 27, 2016 Stephen Clark

SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk on Tuesday outlined an ambition to send humans to Mars with methane-fueled reusable spaceships and the largest rocket ever built, an effort he said will likely require government support and initially cost billions of dollars to develop and test.

Watch live as Elon Musk unveils his vision for missions to Mars

September 27, 2016 Stephen Clark

SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk will unveil his plans for human missions to Mars on Tuesday in a presentation at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico. Watch the speech live at 2:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT).

NASA to have limited role in SpaceX’s planned Mars campaign

September 21, 2016 Stephen Clark

Expertise, input and advice from seasoned NASA engineers will improve SpaceX’s chances of nailing the first commercial landing on Mars as soon as late 2018, a senior space agency official said Wednesday, but Elon Musk’s space transport company will likely seek more independence from U.S. government support on later expeditions to the red planet.

NASA official says new mission selections on track despite InSight woes

September 7, 2016 Stephen Clark

A $150 million cost overrun and two-year launch delay for NASA’s InSight Mars mission could mean fewer opportunities for new planetary science missions in the next few years, but the head of the agency’s science division said this week NASA will still approve development of at least one new solar system probe in December.

NASA spells out support for SpaceX’s Red Dragon Mars mission

July 29, 2016 Stephen Clark

If SpaceX is able to dispatch a robotic Dragon capsule to land on the red planet in 2018 on time and successfully, engineers stand to get a lesson on what it will take to eventually send humans there, capturing key data on an untested Mars landing scheme a decade sooner than NASA could do it, space agency officials said this week.

ExoMars orbiter fine-tunes path toward red planet

July 28, 2016 Stephen Clark

A European spacecraft cruising toward Mars fired its main engine Thursday, tweaking its trajectory and helping set up for carefully-choreographed simultaneous maneuvers Oct. 19 to place part of the tandem mission into orbit around the red planet and deposit a stationary battery-powered lander on the Martian surface.

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.