NASA's space shuttle Challenger completed 10 missions before it broke apart during a launch in 1986, killing seven astronauts.

NASA is gearing up to launch a new crew to the International Space Station (ISS). The upcoming Crew-12 consists of NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.

Frigid temperatures have delayed NASA's preparations for its wet dress rehearsal for the Artemis II launch, the space agency announced Friday.

What everyone agrees on is that NASA needs a new spacecraft capable of relaying communications from Mars to Earth. This issue has become especially acute with the recent loss of NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft. NASA’s best communications relay remains the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has now been there for 20 years.

The rollout on Saturday, Jan. 17, of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is a crucial step signaling that NASA is in the final stretches to get its first crewed lunar mission in five decades off the ground. That mission, known as Artemis 2, will send three Americans and one Canadian on a 10-day trip around the moon.

Blue Origin is pausing flights aboard its suborbital space tourism rocket New Shepard in order to expedite development of a lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis program.

While Artemis II won’t land, its successor, Artemis III, is expected to launch and land on the surface of the moon mid-2027. NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to build the vehicle that will carry astronauts to the moon.

NASA has selected Axiom Space for its fifth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station, scheduled for 2027.