As the brash, stylish new kid on the block, SpaceX was sure to win its share of admirers. But last week’s launch hiccup showed that the private space operator, helmed by Elon Musk, has a few issues to work out, just like stodgy old NASA. Don’t get me wrong: SpaceX has done unbelievably impressive things. [...]

SpaceX’s history-making mission to the International Space Station is on hold, following a valve malfunction Saturday morning that caused a last-minute launch abort. But the California company says its rocket is now good to go and will be ready to launch in the early hours of Tuesday, May 22. If all goes as planned, SpaceX’s [...]

In a widely anticipated announcement today, the new company Planetary Resources revealed their plans for near-Earth asteroid domination. The group has mapped out a multi-stage process to map, observe, capture, tow and eventually mine asteroids for valuables. “A single 500-meter platinum-rich asteroid contains the equivalent of all the platinum group metals mined in history,” reads [...]

SpaceX has been the darling in the past few years of the so-called NewSpace movement—private companies aspiring to do the spacefaring work that was once limited to the space programs of the world’s superpowers. The California-based company, headed by Paypal co-founder Elon Musk, has already completed successful demonstrations of its Falcon 9 rocket and its [...]

The space shuttle program has just two launches remaining on the calendar, one April 29 and one in June. After that, no one knows what the next U.S.-based rocket to take astronauts to orbit will look like, when it will launch, or who will have built it. But all indications are that the rocket won’t [...]