Spacecraft

Several companies have contracts with NASA to design private space habitats to replace the International Space Station once it’s gone

Asteroid 2024 YR4’s risk of hitting Earth is shifting with new data, astronomers say

Proposed U.S. space defenses against hypersonic nuclear missiles are unnecessary, impractical and would trigger a dangerous new arms race

In partnership with NASA, the Intuitive Machines lander Athena will send a water-seeking drill, a pogo-sticking crater probe and other novel technologies to the moon

Elon Musk’s Fork in the Road isn’t just a sculpture—it’s a monument to the tech world’s obsession with civilizational survival, which has its roots in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence

The possibility of the asteroid 2024 YR4 impacting our planet might not be ruled out until 2028, raising the prospect we’ll need to prepare for the worst

Material retrieved from the asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft shows that all the basic building blocks of life were astonishingly widespread in the early solar system

From space weather to science missions, there’s a lot to be excited about in heliophysics this year.

Peculiar bursts of energy called chorus waves have been detected in deep space far from our planet, suggesting they could pose problems for long-distance space travel

We discuss a big week for commercial spaceflight, a red dye ban and a scary spider species in this news roundup.

A little-known chapter of the Hubble Space Telescope’s history is a reminder of the risks of looking at the sun

The heavy-lift New Glenn rocket soared to success, reaching orbit on its highly anticipated inaugural flight but failing to land its booster on an ocean barge