The race to Mars has quietly become the defining contest of twenty-first century spaceflight, pitting a state-backed Chinese program, a commercially driven SpaceX campaign, and a methodical NASA ...

Where Elon Musk talks openly about building a city on Mars, NASA has been careful to draw a line between exploration and colonization. The agency has long voiced a desire to send astronauts to explore ...

Biological limits A sustainable Mars colony will need to include raising children there, but childbirth would be very risky on Mars. (Courtesy: iStock/Denis Art) “It’s hard to say when exactly sending ...

NASA has lost contact with one of its three spacecraft orbiting Mars, the agency announced Tuesday. Meanwhile, a second Mars orbiter is perilously close to running out of fuel, and the third mission ...

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced Sunday that his company had “shifted focus” from taking humans to Mars to building a ...