Boeing Starliner astronauts finally head home, nine months later

Eight days. That’s how long Boeing Starliner’s mission — its first flight test with crew aboard — was supposed to last. But this mission has been singular in almost every way, and astronauts B [...]

Trump's defunding of NASA would be catastrophic

"This is probably the most uncertain future NASA has faced, maybe since the end of Apollo," Casey Dreier tells me over the phone. Dreier is the chief of space policy at The Planetary Society [...]

Why on Earth would NASA build a nuclear reactor on the Moon?

"Duffy to announce nuclear reactor on the moon" is not a headline I imagined reading before last week. Sure, as a sci-fi loving nerd, I could see a future where nuclear power played a role i [...]

The FAA is grounding SpaceX's Starship after its latest explosion

The Federal Aviation Administration is ordering SpaceX to conduct a mishap investigation into what caused the company's Starship rocket to explode mid-flight on January 16. Until the FAA approves [...]

Orbital AI data centers could work, but they might ruin Earth in the process

At the start of the month, Elon Musk announced that two of his companies — SpaceX and xAI  — were merging, and would jointly launch a constellation of 1 million satellites to operate as orbital d [...]

SpaceX is preparing the next-gen Starship after a successful flight test

SpaceX's second-generation Starship vehicle has just made a graceful exit. The company achieved every major objective it set for the super-heavy lift vehicle's 11th flight test, the second-g [...]

How to watch SpaceX's ninth Starship flight test on Tuesday

The FAA last week cleared SpaceX's Starship to fly again after concluding its review of the previous flight, which ended in an explosion, and the next test could now take off as soon as Tuesday. [...]

SpaceX's Starship explodes (again) during its eighth test flight

SpaceX has lost another Starship, as the vehicle's eighth test flight ended in an explosion just like its seventh. The first few minutes of the flight went according to plan: SpaceX launched the [...]

SpaceX's Starship deploys its payload for the first time

SpaceX has successfully launched the Starship for its 10th test flight after it was delayed a couple of times due to weather conditions and other issues. This time, the company was able to achieve its [...]