Spacecraft

This year’s most interesting space images include infrared views of galactic “bones,” an asteroid’s double moon, Jupiter’s giant polar vortex, and more

Here’s the best, most inspiring and coolest science we encountered this year

The first vehicles to fly under NASA’s new lunar delivery initiative will aim to be the first commercial spacecraft to land softly on another celestial body

Mars Sample Return has always been an expensive, high-risk, high-reward project. But now, with realization of the mission’s actual cost and expanding timeline, Congress must commit to fully supporting the effort or risk tanking the rest of NASA’s planetary science program

Astronomers are moving ahead in planning NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory, a telescope designed to answer the ultimate question: Are we alone in the universe?

A brain drain from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory could pose problems for the space agency’s ambitious science plans

The Xuntian Space Telescope is China’s entry in a global race to unlock the secrets of dark energy, and it will now lift off no earlier than mid-2025

The International Space Station—larger than a football field and weighing almost 450 tons—must eventually fall to Earth. It’s a delicate, dangerous process

SpaceX’s Starship—the most powerful rocket ever built—experienced a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” in its otherwise successful second full-scale launch, triggering a federal investigation into what went wrong

The best-yet map of active volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io hints at a hidden magma ocean—and more

Amid uncertainty over space agencies’ plans for future Venus exploration, enthusiasm for a private-sector mission grows

The James Webb Space Telescope’s studies of the Crab nebula may shed new light on the supernova remnant’s origins