The dawn is breaking on a new era of space exploration, with moon bases and Mars colonies potentially only decades away. Live Science tracks the researchers, companies and countries setting their sights on the stars to bring you the biggest stories in space. Whether it's reporting on concerns that alien organisms could hitch a ride on our spacecraft and contaminate Earth, explaining what 11 billion people means for space travel, sharing a glorious photo of Earth during a total solar eclipse snapped by Japan's lunar lander, or compiling a list of the weirdest things we have launched into space, our expert writers and editors will ignite your sense of interstellar adventure with the latest space exploration news, features and articles.
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First photos of SpaceX lunar rocket crash show blackened hole torn into the moon's surfaceNew images from South Korea's Danuri lunar orbiter reveal where a runaway SpaceX rocket part slammed into the moon on Wednesday.
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'We are not giving up yet': Private mission to rescue NASA's Swift telescope is spinning out of controlKatalyst Space's LINK spacecraft is recovering from an unexpected spin in orbit, and will need a little more time to rescue NASA's falling Swift observatory.
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Chinese rocket struck by lightning moments after launch in front of packed crowd (video)A Long March 3B rocket was struck by lightning in front of a packed crowd, around 30 seconds after lifting off from a Chinese spaceport. Despite this, the spacecraft survived its ascent and successfully deployed its payload in orbit.
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Humanity's first look at the surface of Mars shared on 50th anniversary of historic NASA landingSpace Photo of the Week NASA has unearthed the historic photos its Viking 1 lander sent home just after landing on Mars in July 1976.
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NASA awakens New Horizons spacecraft to do science billions of miles beyond PlutoNASA's record-breaking New Horizons spacecraft has awoken from a 321-day hibernation in "good health" as it resumes unprecedented science at the solar system's edge.
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'The moon looked wrong': Artemis II mission controller Chris White tells the story behind NASA's historic photosInterview Artemis II lead communications officer Chris White describes the tensest and most shocking moments of the historic moon mission, as seen from his desk at mission control in Houston.
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Secretive Chinese probe snaps first photo of Earth's mysterious 'quasi-moon' — and it may pose a big problemChina's Tianwen-2 spacecraft has captured the first close-up photo of one of Earth's "quasi-moons," Kamo'oalewa. However, the image and the timing of its release suggest that it may be harder for the probe to collect samples from the space rock than originally planned.
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Scientists propose launching a giant 'airbag' into space to protect us from solar superstorms — and experts say it's 'quite feasible'A new study suggests creating a satellite constellation, dubbed StormWall, that could reduce the impacts of the worst solar storms by more than 50%. The novel plan, which involves dumping gas into the magnetosphere, could be the only way to directly protect ourselves from dangerous space weather, experts say.
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China's top-secret 'dragon' space plane just released another unidentified object over EarthThe Shenlong, or "divine dragon," space plane just deployed a mysterious payload above our planet. The top-secret spacecraft, which has never been properly photographed, has now released at least nine objects in low Earth orbit.
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