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Striving to be ready for an onslaught of launches under contract over the next few years, SpaceX plans to double the launcher production rate in its Southern California factory before the end of the year without compromising its commitments to develop a human-rated commercial spaceship, demonstrate rocket reusability, and further cut the cost of space transportation. "We need to meet our cadence of launch," said Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX, at a discussion Wednesday at the Atlantic Council in Washington. "It's about one a month this year, and it's almost two a month next year." While SpaceX tries to manage...

NASA is just about ready to test-launch its so-called flying saucer into the edge of space. The Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator is literally a flying saucer. The original launch date of June 3 was scrubbed because of weather. The next potential launch date is Thursday, June 5, NASA said. "The agency is moving forward and getting ready for Mars as part of NASA's Evolvable Mars campaign," said Michael Gazarik, associate administrator for Space Technology at NASA Headquarters, in a news release. "We fly, we learn, we fly again. We have two more vehicles in the works for next year."

NASA has been talking about sending people to Mars by 2035. That goal is still on the books, despite recent upheaval in the space program, according to two of the agency's top scientists. "In the near term, Mars remains our primary focus," Ellen Stofan, NASA's chief scientist said May 15 in a talk at the Royal Institution in London ... ....scientists [also] decided to "redirect" an asteroid into an orbit of the moon and are searching for an asteroid that's an appropriate candidate. "Once we find the right one, we'll use all the technology we've got," he said. "We'll snag...

A coronal mass ejection, or CME, surged off the side of the sun on May 9, 2014, and NASA's newest solar observatory caught it in extraordinary detail. This was the first CME observed by the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, which launched in June 2013 to peer into the lowest levels of the sun's atmosphere with better resolution than ever before. Watch the movie to see how a curtain of solar material erupts outward at speeds of 1.5 million miles per hour.

In March, while scouring through her math teacher's pile of projects, Anna Olson was attracted to the sciences section, and discovered NASA's 2014 educational "REEL Science Communications" video contest. In a two-week period, Olson pulled together two different contest entries, with a little help from dad and movie producer Gregory T. Olson's green screen, brother Geoffrey Olson's guitar-strumming skills and fact-checking by older brother Alec Olson, who works in a lab at UC Davis. The Pacific Collegiate School student reviewed her video entries, posted on YouTube during an interview at her school. She pointed out that her winning entry had...

It’s one example of how extended stays in flight can alter your health. Despite NASA’s best efforts, bones and muscles weaken and months of rehabilitation are needed after astronauts spend a half-year on the space station. But in recent years, there have been strides in understanding what microgravity does to the human body — and how to fix it.

Elon Musk isn’t afraid to shake things up, and he did so again with accusations that US defense contracts awarded to a competitor were the product of corruption. SpaceX, Musk’s orbital transport firm, has been competing for a major contract to put US Air Force satellites in orbit. With a dearth of private investment in space and the end of the US space shuttle program, SpaceX has quickly leapt to the fore of aerospace firms with the help of contracts from NASA to provide re-supply missions to the International Space Station and develop a manned spacecraft to fly astronauts there....

Nearly six months after announcing that SpaceX would be testing Raptor engine components at NASA's Stennis Space Center, a ribbon cutting ceremony this past Monday officially unveiled the newly refurbished E-2 test stand. SpaceX has been working on the Raptor methane-fueled rocket engine since 2009. The new engine, a reusable engine is destined to be used in future versions of the Falcon Heavy and in the long term for the notional SpaceX Mars Colonial Transporter. Testing is set to begin within the coming days after the E-2 test stand activation is completed a spokesperson for SpaceX confirmed to SpaceRef. SpaceX...

BREVARD -- Brevard County will soon be the home of the largest economic development project in the country, officials said. The Economic Development Commission of Florida's Space Coast announced on May 8 that Northrop Grumman Corporation has selected Brevard County for an expansion project that could create 1,800 jobs, with an average annual salary of $100,000. The project was secretly known as "Project Magellan" throughout the due diligence phase, as part of a confidentiality agreement between the company and the Space Coast, officials said. Northrop Grumman plans to invest approximately $500 million in new capital investments at Melbourne International Airport,...

Sriharikota: The Indian Space Research Organisation or ISRO achieved another milestone today as it successfully launched the Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle or GSLV-D5 from the space port at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. The advanced GSAT-14 communications satellite that GSLV-D5 is carrying has also been separated from the rocket and placed into orbit. The Rs. 350-crore mission marks India's entry into the multi-billion dollar commercial launcher market on a fully indigenous large rocket. An India-made cryogenic engine powers the GSLV-D5, which stands almost 50 meters tall (as high as a 17-storey building) and weighs a whopping 415 tons (as much 80...

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees the country’s space sector, said he would ban exports of Russian-made rocket engines used to launch U.S. military satellites. Rogozin also said via Twitter that Russia does not intend to continue cooperating with the United States on the International Space Station program beyond 2020. The White House has proposed extending station operations to 2024 and has been working to bring the program's international partners onboard. The rocket engine in question is the RD-180, which is used to power the first stage of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket, one of the U.S....

Moscow is banning Washington from using Russian-made rocket engines, which the US has used to deliver its military satellites into orbit, said Russia’s Deputy PM, Dmitry Rogozin, who is in charge of space and defense industries. According to Rogozin, Russia is also halting the operation of all American GPS stations on its territory from June 1. DETAILS TO FOLLOW

Russia will reject a US request to use the International Space Station after 2020 in retaliation for trade sanctions imposed over Russia's aggressive annexation of Crimea, its deputy prime minister announced today. The space station is maintained by both American and Russian crews. But because NASA's shuttle program was decommissioned in 2011, the only way to get there is on board Russian spacecraft. The US currently pays Russia $60 million per person to ferry its astronauts to the space station, and had planned to continue working on it until 2024. "The Russian segment can exist independently from the American one....

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WAAY) - As conflict in the Ukraine heats-up, Russia is trying to keep the U.S. at bay, by terminating a partnership with NASA. "This is an issue we have to address if we are going to maintain America’s preeminence in space," said U.S. Rep Mo Brooks (R-5thDistrict). 
Russia has threatened to stop selling RD-180 rocket engines to the U.S., and to stop allowing U.S. astronauts to use their rockets to go to the International Space Station in 2020. "What you are seeing is the International Space Station and our military satellites have been caught up in a game...

In retaliation for imposing sanctions, Russia will also bar its rocket engines from launching US military satellites Russia is to deny the US future use of the International Space Station beyond 2020 and will also bar its rocket engines from launching US military satellites as it hits back at American sanctions imposed over Ukraine crisis. Russia’s deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin announced a series of punitive measures on Tuesday against the US in response to sanctions imposed after Russia annexed Crimea...

World Leadership: In retaliation for imposing sanctions over Ukraine, Moscow will bar our use of its rocket engines in launching U.S. military satellites and deny the U.S. use of the International Space Station. It may come as news to some that the nation that once used the massive Saturn V launch vehicle to put men on the moon now imports Russian rocket engines, but we do. That supply is to be cut off in response to the sanctions imposed by President Obama in response to Moscow's annexation of Crimea and its actions against Ukraine. Also to be cut off is...

Two forthcoming reports on the western Antarctic ice sheet confirm previous fears that the ice's melt will increase ocean levels by as much as 13 feet within the next few centuries. They also suggest that the process has already begun — and is likely not reversible. The New York Times reports that both papers — one by NASA scientists, to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, and one by University of Washington scientists to appear in Science — find that the West Antarctic ice sheet is melting because of naturally-occurring warm water welling up from deep in the ocean. None...

On this day in 1961, Alan B. Shepard Jr. muttered to himself, "Don't f*** up, Shepard...", huddled into the Freedom 7 Mercury capsule, and lifted off to become the first America to reach space. These are the photographs from the historic suborbital flight.

Nasa has released pictures of a prototype space suit, parts of which American astronauts could one day wear on the first manned mission to Mars. The public voted on three different designs for the Z-2 and the "Technology" design won by a landslide with 63 per cent of the vote. The design uses luminescent wire to form a light on the front of the suit that can be personalised to help astronauts identify other individuals on their team. The Z-2 is a prototype so will not be making any future trip to Mars itself as it does not have the...